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Week Ender — Searing Contradiction: Wildfires and climate politics
00:25:46
Wildfires may sound remote — something that happens deep in a forest or on an empty mountainside.
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A
This episode is brought to you by Facebook. So you were scrolling on Marketplace and there it was, the bike you'd been searching for. You sent a message and it turned out the seller was super chatty, kind of funny, and an avid cyclist. The next thing you know, you're in a cycling crew. Well, a community cycling group. The thing about Facebook, you might find more than what you're looking for, from a browse to a bike ride this summer. Find more on Facebook.
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B
So for me, the term wildfire, especially in the European context, is kind of a misnomer. I think of it as a fire in wild lands, forests or mountainsides, where only adventures we're going to go anyway. And in many parts of the world, that's pretty much how that term is used. But in Europe, there's not so much wild land. There's not much distance between nature and major population centers. That's why these wildfires near Bordeaux, around Madrid, have been so scary. They threaten major cities and they're out of control. So when these wildfires happen, European countries band together. They send planes, helicopters, emergency vehicles. It's becoming kind of a routine. For example, around 240 Firefighters from Portugal and Poland have been dispatched to help France and Spain. But what Europe doesn't seem to be getting much better at is keeping these fires from burning so wildly, managing forests, clearing combustible vegetation, and maintaining abandoned land. And while droughts and heat waves are certainly fueling these flames, Brussels is weakening or delaying policies meant to stop the climate crisis from getting worse. So why are we in this situation where Europe can organize an efficient common response to a fire, but it doesn't seem to be able to muster the same level of common action before it starts? What would serious prevention actually look like? And who bears the growing cost when it all burns?
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C
Sarah Wheaton.
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B
I'm Sarah Wheaton, host of the Brussels Playbook.
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D
Weekender.
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B
To help me break it all down, I'm joined by three of my Politico colleagues, senior climate reporter Zia Weisse, sustainability reporter Marianne Gros, and Annes Roenberg from our agriculture team. Okay, so before we get into the policies, I mean, look, wildfires have been something that we talk about pretty much every summer. Now, is there anything that actually stands out as different to you about each of these? Marianne, starting with you, I found it
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E
quite surprising that there were a number of fires happening further up north. I mean, obviously the ones in southwest France and in Spain have gotten a lot of media attention. But there was also a big fire in a forest near Paris. There was One in Brittany, which is where I'm from. Like, the. The amount of times it's happening closer and closer to. To regions that are kind of considered as cooler is a bit surprising, I think.
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D
I think in this case, just the scale of the fires is pretty notable in Spain. I think some fires merged into this mega fire near Madrid, and then. Yeah, the one in. Near Bordeaux in France is just obviously enormous. Yes. It's notable that both are quite close to major centers of population, Madrid and Bordeaux, respectively, and. Which also increases the danger of. Of these fires.
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B
Yeah. And on us making your Politico podcast debut, what stood out to you?
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C
I mean, the scale of these fires have been enormous. You know, coming from a Nordic country, you can feel a bit distant to some of these things, but, I mean, if you just put yourself in these people's shoes and reading about some of these stories of people who had to leave their home, and they can read in the news that 200 houses have burned down and they don't know which one is theirs, that's must be so horrible for these people.
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B
Okay, so we have the compassionate Dane speaking there, but let's get into some of the policy implications. So, Zia.
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E
Yeah.
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B
You talked about the scale. Agnes talks about the people losing their homes. Hundreds of thousands of people evacuated in France and Spain. But there's one detail that you phrased in this kind of horrifying way in an editorial meeting, that the French fire is powerful enough to create its own weather. What does that even mean?
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D
Yeah, that's right. So this is a phenomenon that's very rarely seen in Europe. It's. Let me see if I can get this right. Pyro cumulo nimbus is what it is known in. In scientific terms, it's basically a firestorm. So the fire gets so large and so intense that it creates its own storm clouds. And those storm clouds, then, like, there's wind that further fans on the flames and potentially lightning that sparks further fires. So it really makes these fires more unpredictable, which is really a huge challenge for firefighters to contain them. And that's what we saw in Bordeaux. That's normally something you see more often in places like Australia or Canada. So it's really a sign of how intense and large that fire got.
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B
Yeah. And just how the nature of these fires is changing in Europe. And kind of on that note, you know, climate change is certainly an obvious explanation, but as we said, this is kind of a yearly ritual now that we're writing about the wildfires. And last year, you know, when you're writing about this, you said governments can't simply use that as an excuse. So how much of the devastation is caused by this hotter weather, this changing nature of the fires, and how much, by the way, Europe manages or fails to manage the land?
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D
Yeah, so I mean, climate change doesn't spark fires. Right. But what it does is it creates the conditions for fires to spread with greater ease. So climate change is making Europe drier, it's causing more droughts, it's causing more heat waves, so that dries out the vegetation and that makes it really easy for fire to spread quickly and fast. But, you know, it doesn't actually spark it. That's often human caused, which doesn't mean arson, which is something, a conclusion that many people jump to. But it's often an accident. It might be farm machinery striking on a stone and creating a spark, you know, so preventing ignition is actually very, very difficult because it often is just an accident. Sometimes it's carelessness, people flicking a cigarette at a car window or something. So what you can really manage and prevent is what's known as fuel load. So the fuel, these fires feast on the dry vegetation that's left all around. And that's something we can influence and manage. It means taking better care of our forests and better care of the spaces where vegetation meets our cities. So, you know, creating firebreaks around where humans live so that the fire doesn't jump from a burning forest directly to a village, for example. It means, yes, sometimes clear cutting certain parts of a forest so that there's a break in the middle so that not the entire forest starts burning, but, you know, only part of it. And it means better rural management and ensuring that we don't let wild vegetation grow where we used to have managed land. Because that's a real problem in Europe, land abandonment, and that we have fewer farmers taking care of the land and fewer shepherds that are letting the animals graze.
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B
And actually that is a perfect segue to Anas. So, you know, there is a bit of a tension on the one hand, as Zia mentioned, sometimes actually farm machinery can start the fires. We wrote about an instance where a fire in Spain, I believe last year, the, the Spanish government actually said, hey guys, like, don't do your farm work today because it's too hot and dry. And somebody ignored that order and started his tractor and started a fire. But at the same time, you know, the EU is trying to say, hey, actually this risk of fire and this rural abandonment justifies a lot of our agricultural policy.
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C
That's the Interesting thing. Right. It's both the, sometimes the actions of farmers, but also the lack of farmers can actually be a problem in these wildfires. What we're seeing is that agriculture has a huge problem with, you know, it's not a lot of young people want to go into farming. They want to move into the big cities. Right. So we have a lot of villages out in the rural areas where fewer and fewer people are living there. People are leaving their farms and their land. And you know, sometimes you can think maybe that's, that's great for the nature. Right. But if nobody's taking any decisions about what should be happening with that land, it just grows over and it grows over with really dry grass and shrubs. Yeah. So the EU politicians and the, in the commission, they're actually, they're looking towards some of these farm policies as a solution to, to the wildfires. For example, the agriculture commissioner, Christoph Hansen, he wrote on X that the EU farm subsidies can help with this and already is doing it with forest restoration and reducing the flammable grasslands.
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B
Yeah. And about reducing flammable grasslands. So one of the ways to do that is to like, plant crops. Another way to do that is to remove all of the just kind of random brush that is cropping up in these places where maybe there used to be farmland, maybe there just is nothing. And that's another kind of, maybe unexpected way that we're looking at having a natural approach to fire control. Somewhat natural, yeah.
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C
And this is really interesting because we're really going back to something that's very ancient. Right. Which is to put out goats, sheep, cows on these lands.
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B
Wait, wait, goats?
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C
Yes.
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We don't need like fancier planes to pour water on things.
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And I think we need the planes. But one of the arguments I'm hearing, especially actually from the farm lobbyists and from experts are saying that it's really expensive to deploy all these planes all the time and we don't have enough planes. And a cheaper option would be to prevent these fires from actually happening. And that solution is just very low tech. Actually. It's something that's been around for thousands of years, but we're kind of going away from, which is shepherds. What we're seeing, like completely seriously, is that in Spain, multiple different regions, they're actually paying shepherds to go around with goats and cows to eat the shrubbery and give them money for this service, not only to produce milk or meat, but to actually help with preventing these fires in risky areas.
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B
Okay. So it's a low tech solution, but it's for some reason, it kind of hasn't, hasn't fully taken off.
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C
Right. So I don't have the numbers of where this is happening and where it's not. But it's definitely something that depends really on the local governments. Are they putting money into this? Are they prioritizing this solution? And some experts have pointed to this as like, we're actually seeing that it's reducing the risk of fires in some areas, but it does cost some money. That's the drawback.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So ultimately, you know, it does need subsidies from governments from potentially EU agriculture budget. But there's also this other paradox, like Europeans are eating less meat. Some parts of the commission have been sort of gently encouraging people to go vegetarian, but these landscapes do need more grazing animals. And then when those animals are done eating, then we eat them, you know, and animals are also a major source of climate pollution. So can you kind of walk us through this, this contradiction here?
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C
Yeah, this definitely looks like a paradox. Right? We need these animals to reduce our climate risk, but we're also seeing them as maybe a problem with pollution, with climate change. But when you look at the numbers, it's actually not that much of a paradox because the European Environmental Agency, they, they did the math and they looked at all the animals we have in Europe, and we can actually just use around 10% of all the farmed animals we got to manage these areas. So it's not really a paradox. It's more about what kind of agriculture we are having. And if you want to go into the supermarket, get some cheap meat, then it's probably not one of these cows out in the, in the mountains that you're, you're going to get. It's something from a barn where they're standing very close and using very cheap methods. So these are completely different types of agriculture.
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B
Okay, so that's, you know, that's prevention that we're talking about here. But looking at the EU response, the EU is now preparing to spend more on adapting to fires, floods, extreme heat. At the same time, it's been you know, weakening or delaying parts of the green deal. The EU commissioner responsible for crisis preparedness, Hajalabib, has warned this week that these fires show the danger of rolling back Europe's green agenda. But at the same time, the competitiveness agenda is increasingly urgent as we're seeing, you know, this growing threat from China. So, Zia, how is this debate playing out? And a question that we constantly ask on this podcast is like, can we have our green cake and our competitiveness Cake at the same time?
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D
Yeah, good question. I mean, yeah, competitiveness can't put out a fire. I wouldn't say there is a debate right now, perhaps because everyone's on holiday already, but it is a contradiction.
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B
Right, you're going to get hate mail about that one.
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D
Oh, it is a contradiction because, yes, climate impacts, climate disasters are intensifying and the European Union has over the last two years rolled back some of its more ambitious climate policies, like think its combustion engine phase out and more recently it's weakened its carbon market rules. So, yeah, I mean, I see a contradiction there. I think the average European citizen probably sees a contradiction there. But as you say, there are competing priorities, like, yeah, we want Europe's economy to be competitive and our welfare to grow and for Europe to be prosperous. In some ways you can do these things at the same time. You know, some measures, like switching to cleaner homegrown electricity sources has both climate benefit and a competitiveness benefit. Right. It reduces our exposure to volatile fossil fuel imports and it reduces our emissions. But not everything is quite as clean cut there.
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B
Well, Marianne, I mean, you have been reporting on something that kind of adds some pretty sharp financial data to this question. You know, we can see homes, cars, farms, shops and forests going up in flames. But there are also, especially as these fires get closer to like really populated areas, businesses that are forced to close, people unable to work, affects tourism. And then of course, there's a huge rebuilding operation afterwards. So we're looking at billions of euros in damages, right?
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E
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, right now, the cost of rebuilding after the fires that are currently ongoing in Spain and France are still up in the air. The insurance companies that we've spoken to have said it's too early to really
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B
assess the damage and wait until things stop burning down to know how precisely.
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E
But we do know, for example, the French government has already said that about 240 homes have been burnt in the southwest region. The Spanish insurer Matfrey said that they had received about 116 claims, I think it was most of which were related to home insurance. So that gives you an idea of how many homes have been lost. But as you rightly point out, there are also big unemployment benefits that are going to be pushed out because a lot of companies have had to close down and put their staff on furlough because of the risk in the area. And the French Environment Ministry estimates that the cost of reforestation, so replanting the land that has been burnt for everything that's been lost since January this year in France is already about a billion euro.
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B
And that's just for, you know, one fire season, like. And you're saying this is now happening pretty regularly.
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E
I should say as well that a lot of the land that's been burned is actually timber plantation and that is assets that have gone up in flames for a lot of companies as well.
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B
And so, so, yeah, who, who pays for these losses? I guess there's insurers and governments. Let's start with the insurers. You've been speaking to insurers and reinsurers, basically companies that insure the insurers. What are they telling you?
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E
So they say that right now wildfires don't actually represent a massive proportion of what they call insured losses. So. So everything that they have to pay for, because typically fires don't affect that many homes, if you compare it to a flood or a hurricane, for example. However, what they say is that the risk of wildfires is the fastest growing risk for them year on year in Europe especially. So it's definitely a concern. Then there are different types of insurance schemes that are adopted across the eu. So with wildfires in France, for example, that's still covered by sort of standard home insurance. So these companies will reimburse people and help them rebuild their homes. And they've also said that they will pay for relocation whilst they can't come back to where they live, which I think is quite a standard contract, basically home insurance contract or service that the insurance provides. But then if you think of climate and extreme weather events more broadly, there are public private partnerships in France, in Spain as well, where basically the risk is shared between the government and the private insurance firms. And the idea is to kind of spread it out and make it easier to manage in order to prevent insurance companies from basically hiking up the price as these extreme weather events become more frequent and make it completely unaffordable for people.
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B
Yeah, I was going to say, you know, looking at flood prone areas, for example, we often see that eventually the cost of insurance just becomes so high that you can't actually afford to have a home there. Yeah.
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E
And I mean, if you look at Europe compared to other regions of the world, I think it's not the same picture. For example, there are insurance firms in the US that won't even go anywhere near Southern California anymore. And if they do, the cost of insurance, your house, is absurd. We're not seeing those kind of levels in Europe just yet. Some insurance firms have told us and experts have told us that they are starting to see a little bit of either backtracking from certain high risk zones or just premiums going up. So, you know, reticence to cover people as easily as people before. But we're not yet seeing like insurance firms basically just saying, we won't touch Andalucia anymore. And that's usually because there are government policies in place to prevent that from happening. And this is where the kind of cost sharing mechanisms come into place. But obviously that also means the public budget just takes a bigger hit.
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B
Yeah, I mean, and you had this interesting statistic in your story that around three quarters of natural disaster losses in Europe aren't insured. So, I mean, yeah, we can have these public private partnerships, but ultimately it seems it's just on the government if it's not insured by.
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E
Yeah, absolutely. If you have lots of people that aren't insured privately and then a flood happens, a hurricane happens, a wildfire happens, the government has to step in and help clean it up. And so at the EU level, the European Central bank and also the insurance regulator have sort of raised awareness of this growing risk. And they have been suggested that public private mechanisms should become the norm. We could even have one at EU level. They say there also could be more climate disaster funds available to help governments pay for this when it happens, like sharing between EU governments if it's at the EU level, obviously. And yeah, promoting the examples that we have of public private partnerships to make them more standard across the eu, because right now I think they're still an anomaly.
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B
Okay, so just stepping back, looking at your own policy areas, what's the one thing that you'll be watching for as a sign that Europe is becoming better at living with and or preventing fires like these honestly made you go last last time, so this time I'll let you go first.
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C
Now, I've been covering this prevention angle. Right. I really think that one thing I would be looking for is are we going to go from just reacting to these fires to actually do something about preventing them? There was an expert panel with like wildfire experts from all around Europe. And they all said in this report that came out last year, they said, you know, Europe, they're reacting every time there's a new wildfire, they're saying, oh no, we're going to send some planes. Where are the planes? Where are the firefighters? Do we have enough soldiers to send out emergency and help here? Yeah. So I would be looking for, are we going to get some real preventative policies here, Zia?
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D
I think the way to determine if we're doing better at Preventing these fires is if we're going to see more manageable fires, because, as I said, like, it's quite difficult to prevent ignition of fires. But what we can really do is, as Agnes said, is prevention work to make sure these fires are more manageable when they happen, so that when a fire does break out, that firefighters can get it under control and it doesn't get as large and unmanageable as the fires we've seen in France and Spain this week. And that can be done in, you know, yes, managing the forest better and managing the vegetation that's around through things like ensuring, like, animals graze and take away the dry vegetation to have fire breaks around human habitation to make sure that the danger to human life and property as well, and therefore also then the insurance burden is lesser, less sexy work than buying planes to extinguish fires. But if we don't do any prevention, I mean, that's what I hear from experts over and over again, no amount of planes can help us fight fires that grow uncontrollably large.
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B
I mean, just briefly, is this a job for Brussels or national capitals?
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D
Probably both, because, yeah, I mean, the EU can probably help. I mean, tools like kind of its agricultural policy, the way it governs, like nature reserves and protected areas like that can be adjusted in ways that might be better equipped to prevent fires. And, yeah, Agnes has been talking about cap and subsidies and supporting shepherds. I think that that's certainly an EU role. But, yeah, ultimately implementing fire prevention work is national and regional work.
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B
Marianne, I would like to see the
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E
European Union address the sort of underlying cause of increasing wildfire risks, which are highly linked to biodiversity loss and nature degradation. A lot of environmental experts say that, you know, healthy forests don't burn as much. They retain the moisture in the soil.
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B
And.
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And what we're seeing burning are more monoculture. So forests where there's only one. One type of tree or two type of trees. So the EU needs to address that. It knows this. But there are tensions around nature and biodiversity laws which relate back to what you were saying about this green deal versus competitiveness issue. Nature and biodiversity laws are usually the first ones to kind of be pushed to the side because people don't like them, because they're burdensome, because they say they have not been well thought out. So when we were talking about forestry management as well, about needing to take care of our forest better in order to reduce the risk of fire or prevent fire from spreading as much, again, you have this debate that comes back every year every summer between environmentalists and the forest landowners around what the best practices are. And some argue that cutting down too much of the shrub hurts biodiversity and that forest don't need human intervention. They've survived long before us. So there's this tension about the best way to go. I think we'll see more of that come up. The arguments between climate adaptation and mitigation measures which would promote more biodiversity.
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B
All right, so it's gonna, it's gonna keep being a hot debate. Sorry I have to end on a very cheesy line, but Marianne Dia Agnes, thank you so much for being here.
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E
Thank you for having us.
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C
Thank you so much for having me.
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B
That wasn't exactly light summer fodder. So before we go, let's end with something a little more fun and hopefully useful. As you may have heard, we're preparing a special summer books episode and we'd love to hear what you think our listeners should be reading over the break. It could be a book that helps explain the politics of your country, something that changed the way you see Europe, or just the best thing you've read recently. Anything goes. You can send us an audio message on WhatsApp at 30 2491050629. You'll find the link and the number in the show notes, or email us@podcastolitico EU. If you haven't already, please subscribe to the Brussels Playbook podcast. That's the feed where you'll find the Weekender and leave us a rating or review. Thanks as always to our audio producer, Saga Rigmar and supervising audio producer, Diana Sturris. I'm Sarah Wheaton. See you next week.