As Pomona College prepares to host a California gubernatorial debate on April 28, Char Miller, W. M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History, examines what steps policymakers could take to mitigate the state’s most pressing environmental challenges. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What are the most pressing environmental challenges facing the state right now?
We face two key and intertwined issues in the state—water and fire. We have too much fire and not enough water. And although the presence or absence of either (and both) of these things varies from year to year, that variability is also a problem. When it rains, we quickly take for granted the elevated levels of our water supplies in the northern reservoirs. On the other hand, fire seasons that lack the ferocity of January 2025, for example, lull us into a dangerous inattention.
What are the biggest water resource management challenges in California?
A resolution for the water crisis is to remind ourselves that California is a state of drought, not “in drought.” That latter claim misses the reality that drought is an ongoing challenge that must be taken seriously all the time. Aligning our policies with that as the default will give us a fighting chance to level off the variability and seasonality of precipitation. With drought as the norm and baseline, we can better prepare for its long-term impact.
What policies or strategies could help reduce wildfire damage in the future?
California was born in and of fire. In the past twenty years or so, fire has increasingly occurred across all 12 months of the year; there is no longer a “fire season.” We must shape public policy around that burning reality. And a critical step is radically reducing the number of new subdivisions and individual homes being built in known fire zones—whether mountainous forests, chaparral-laden foothills or their contiguous canyons, ridgelines and uplands.
Governments at all levels have but one all-encompassing responsibility: to protect the health, safety and welfare of their residents. Greenlighting developments in fire zones (or floodplains) violates that principle. City and county planning and zoning commissions need to scrutinize all development schemes in these areas; the state needs to use its legal authorities to ensure that environmental impact reports are worthy of the name (and if not, to litigate).
California is often seen as a leader in environmental policy. Where has the state made the most progress, and where is it still falling short?
The state has made relatively good progress on fire detection and made strides on increasing the number of sites in and around communities that can be made more fire-resistant, though much more can be done. But the biggest shortfall is with the source of the problem—the millions of residents in fire zones whose very presence in these flammable landscapes act as an accelerant to fires that have erupted and will continue to do so.
Water: ditto. Urban areas, through building codes and incentives, have reduced water consumption considerably. That’s not true for Big Ag [large, industrial food system corporations], which continues to challenge and weaken any legislative effort to rein in its thirsty operations. Until such time as its political power is lessened, we will continue bear witness to this sector’s free pass to waste water.
If you could advise policymakers on one environmental priority for California, what would it be?
To develop funding mechanisms to purchase fire-zone acreage from willing sellers—not eminent domain—before and after fires. That’s one strategy to slow down the rush of population into the most dangerous landscapes in the state; the other is through regulatory clout. And a third depends on insurance companies refusing to insure new homes in fire zones, a disincentive that will dovetail with the other two suggestions.