WHEN Monday morning brought a cool breeze to central Texas, the dominant mood was relief. Most of the state is in a severe drought, with heavy repercussions for agriculture, and it’s been one of the hottest and driest summers on record, a phrase that doesn’t fully convey the discomfort of the situation. But that breeze was an ominous portent. It came from the Tropical Storm Lee, to the east, and it whipped up winds that triggered more than 60 wildfires around the state, many of them major. Four people have been killed, more than 1,000 homes destroyed, and thousands of people evacuated, including around the capital city of Austin. Governor Rick Perry, who is running for president, cut short his campaign trip to South Carolina and came back to deal with the situation here, and even suggested that he might be too busy in Texas to turn up at tonight’s debate, although now it appears that he will take the stage in California as planned.
Covering natural disasters can be difficult logistically, for obvious reasons, and offering analysis on the subject can be problematic. In some sense there is no culprit other than nature, and attempts to inquire about any man-made activity or policy decisions that exacerbated the consequences can be seen as overly political, given that such analyses arise in a context of widespread human distress. But ignoring the human factors is also irresponsible, because it undermines our ability to pursue better stewardship in the future.
To some extent, then, it should be noted that there may be an anthropogenic dimension to the wildfires, insofar as humans contribute to climate change patterns that foster the hot and dry conditions, and some of the damage is due to settlement patterns that can hardly be avoided. Audubon magazine offers an in-depth look at some of the factors:
U.S. policy has pitted a deeply ingrained institutional belief that some wildfires can and should be “fought” against a scientific consensus that they are ecologically indispensable. Global warming has kindled the debate further because it has created both hotter and drier conditions in many places. In addition, a legacy of all-too-successful suppression means that many forests now contain huge “fuel stores” of woody debris that periodic fires used to eliminate. Add the fact that droves of people have moved into fire-prone areas, and you have an increasingly combustible mix of policy and ecology. “Megafires are signaling a new era in fire and land-use management,” says Williams.
At the risk of seeming callow, it has to be said that the fires in Texas do bring up some political issues. Obviously Mr Perry didn’t cause the fires. But over the past year, the hallmarks of his response to the drought have been calls for prayer and for federal emergency assistance. The first measure doesn’t hurt, I suppose, but I’m not aware of any data that supports its efficacy, and prayer is not a good substitute for, say, a more prudent policy about water management, which has long been known to be a looming challenge in Texas and the southwest. Similarly, as Marie Diamond notes at Think Progress, the state is planning deep cuts to the Texas Forest Service’s budget over the next two years. These are not really out of line with other budget-cutting measures in the state, and they were planned in response to the state’s budget shortfall, but as Mr Perry is taking credit for fiscal discipline, he should take responsibility for the corollary, that fiscal stewardship comes at a cost.
The second point, the calls for federal emergency assistance, raises a broader question that Republicans concerned with states’ rights should address. I think it’s consistent for a 10th-amendment advocate to maintain that the federal government has an obligation to provide extra resources to states that are faced with unanticipated challenges. And to be sure, Texas has in some respects exceeded the national standards on its ability to respond to crises. After Hurricane Katrina, for example, the state-and particularly the city of Houston-quietly and capably absorbed several hundred thousand people displaced from neighbouring Louisiana, many of whom have since permanently relocated. But some crises are not unforeseeable, which complicates the question of responsibility. This may not be highly relevant to the current situation-Texas didn’t cause its drought-but it is something to consider, and not solely on environmental issues. If there are areas where the states should have the authority to set their own course, as Mr Perry and others argue, to what extent are they responsible for the consequences thereof?