Too hot to handle: climate denial is driving up the dangers and costs of Western wildfires

This report reviews climate change’s impact on the United States' Western wildfires, discusses their rising costs and increasing size, and projects that in order to fight them, the US Forest Service will have to spend nearly twice as much every year over the next decade. It then outlines policy changes deemed necessary to confront the increasing severity and frequency of wildfires.

The final section illustrates how these changes are set to be undermined by climate inaction—and how they will prove impossible unless lawmakers accept the scientific consensus about climate change and act to confront its costs and causes.