Joe Rogan Experience #1259 - David Wallace-Wells

(sniffs) Four, three, two, one. David. So, first of all, thanks for doing this.

Oh, my pleasure.

And-

Really excited.

How much trouble are we in? Legitimately?

I mean, it's pretty bad already and it's gonna get, I think, a lot, lot worse, so-

It's not bad right now, right here. It's raining. It seems nice out. The hills are green.

I mean, how long ago were the fires? Right, right around the corner.

I got evacuated (laughs) . It was October.

Yeah.

Yeah, it was rough but, in all fairness I've been evacuated three times over the past 20 years.

Yeah, no. The fires, California's fires are kind of interesting in that, um, they both seem like it's like the future, the apocalypse, they're here. But also it's so familiar from like decades of wildfires. Um, but you know there are scientific estimates that say that they're gonna get, by the end of the century, 64 times worse.

What?

Yeah, I think that number's a little high, 'cause that would mean more than half of California burning every year. But, um, I mean it's gonna get, yeah, it'll get, it'll get crazy.

And there's no way to avoid any of this wildfire stuff?

Well, I mean, you know if we don't raise the temperature of the planet then...

(sighs) But is, is that the only thing that's causing wildfire- I mean like obviously if the temperature raises, uh, there's more brown dry-

Yeah.

... leaves and grass and stuff like that. But is-

Yeah, no, there's a, there's a lot of preventative stuff you can do. I mean, not building in certain areas-

Right.

... like, I mean it used to be, you know, the Indians who lived here before the white people came, um, did a lot of controlled burning. They like lived among fires and, um, I think that's like a probably more responsible way to be. But we've now built up the whole state so that they're all these homes that we don't want to burn. They're all these, you know, properties we don't wanna burn. And when you, um, when you like restrict the ability of natural wildfires to burn that means that like more tinder gets built over time, and then you know at some point something lights the match and it all burns. So that, I mean you could, um, you could do more controlled fire. You could take more aggressive action in terms of, um, you know, like spraying foam and that kind of thing.

Mm-hmm.

Um, you could have a lot more firefighters. But I was just talking to a guy yesterday, I'm out here actually doing some reporting on wildfires, and um, who was saying that no Santa Ana powered wildfire has ever been stopped by firefighters. And he is like a environmental historian.

Wow.