From the WashPost: The Biden administration can’t stop wildfires. But it can make them less destructive.

“Rarely in recent memory has the United States seen a wildfire season as awful as in 2020. Scorching temperatures turned vast swaths of forest into tinder. Ferocious winds whipped small sparks into infernos, spinning up towering smoke clouds and terrifying fire tornadoes. Half the continent was suffocated by ash and smoke. By the time winter rain arrived, nearly 10 million acres had burned.

A century of poor forest management and unchecked climate change have pushed the West into a “new world of fire,” said Michael Wara, director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program at Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Environment. Traditional methods of firefighting falter in the face of such huge, unpredictable blazes. Instead, fire experts and environmental groups are hopeful that President-elect Joe Biden will adopt a more scientific approach to the issue, removing fuels from forests and shoring up community defenses to make wildfires less destructive, rather than simply trying to put them out.”