|
|
|
|
|
10/24/07
Expert Available on Wildfire Policy And Southern California |
 |
As wildfires continue to rage across Southern California,
burning more than 400,000 acres and destroying more than
1300 homes, people are beginning to ask, “Does this have to
happen?” “What can we do to stop this from happening again?”
Char Miller, an expert in U. S. environmental politics and
policy, and federal public-lands management, is available to
answer these questions as well as:
• If we have to evacuate 500,000 people in San Diego in the
face of raging flames, what are we doing wrong?
• Why are the politics of fire as supercharged as
conflagrations themselves?
• What makes Southern California so prone to wildfires, and
do other places burn like Southern California?
• What changes are necessary in urban development to
decrease fire danger to Southern California residents?
• What is the role of urban planning in mitigating fire
danger, and why are more rigorous regulations essential?
Miller, a visiting professor of environmental analysis at
Pomona College, notes that:
“We have a couple of options. We either accept that we will
burn out every few years but don’t expect massive amounts of
money being spent on rescue. Or, we pay the taxes that are
required to underwrite a full-fledged, fire-fighting
operation on an annual basis, which neither Californians nor
anyone else seem quite willing to do.”
“L.A. burns as does Australia, British Columbia, Indonesia,
and the Mediterranean basin --anywhere in fact where there
are fire-adapted tree species. Putting Los Angeles in its
proper context is the only way to understand why Malibu,
Lake Arrowhead, and San Diego regularly burn. It is also the
only way to develop rigorous restrictions on urban
development that will bring it into line with the realities
of fire in the Southland.”
“One thing flood-prone areas know post-Katrina is that you
don’t allow people to live in landscapes that you know will
kill them. Fire is much more predictable and recurring than
floods. The question is why do national, state and local
regulations prohibit or discourage people from living in
low-lying areas or make it impossible to get flood insurance
when there are no such regulations to prohibit people from
living in wildfire ecosystems.
“Yes, this would pose a problem for California. Yet we’re
spending billions fighting this fire and spent hundreds of
millions in 2003. You’d think we’d get the hint.
“What’s interesting is that Australia, India, British
Columbia and elsewhere are wrestling with same problems.
They’re living in ecosystems that burn up all the time,
because that’s what they do. At an international conference
last week about climate change and forest fires, every
single country in the world is wrestling with these same
issues: population growth and the sprawling presence of
human beings.”
Miller is the author of Ground Work: Conservation in
American Environmental Culture (2007); Gifford
Pinchot and the Making of Modern Environmentalism
(2001), winner of the 2002 Independent Publishers
Association Biography Prize; and co-author of The
Greatest Good: 100 Years of Forestry in America (1999;
2nd ed., 2004). He is also the editor of the forthcoming
Cities in Nature: Urban Environments in the American West(University
of Nevada Press) and Fluid Arguments: Five Centuries of
Western Water Conflict (2001), among other volumes and
scores of articles in professional journals.
A visiting professor at Pomona College for the 2007-08
academic year, Miller is teaching Crisis Management: The
National Forests and American Culture, Water in the West,
Environmental History, and Cities by Nature: Time, Space,
Place.
He is based at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas,
where he has been a member of the history faculty since 1981
and director of Urban Studies since 2001. In 2007, he was
named a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of
American Historians and in 2002 was recognized as a Piper
Professor, a state-wide honor awarded by the Minnie Stevens
Piper Foundation for excellence in teaching and service to
higher education in Texas. He earned his Ph.D. from The
Johns Hopkins University.
Char Miller can be reached at his office (909) 607-8343 or
at
Char.Miller@pomona.edu
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Quick Links |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Explore Pomona's Web |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Find It |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Search |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
