Assets and Ashes: Wildfire management and the politics of climate change

This Perspective examines the interplay between natural and political systems. Drawing on first-hand experience and recent studies, it employs various graphic novel techniques to illustrate feedback loops that connect the expansion of extractive industries into the urban-wildland interface, the incidence of human-induced wildfires, the use of prohibition policies in wildfire management to protect specific assets, the accumulation of combustible materials, the emission of greenhouse gases from wildfires, and the acceleration of climate change. However, it challenges the notion of endless self-reinforcing vicious cycles by demonstrating how shifts in asset valuation can catalyze a new politics of climate change. Forestry might become a potential vanguard example of an industry shifting its self-perceptions and political alignments in the face of more climate change induced wildfires. This transdisciplinary artistic Perspective builds on and speaks to research in the fields of forest management, climate politics, wildfire sociology, and human ecology.