Under Fire and Under Water: Wildfire, Flooding, and the Fight for Climate Resilience in the American West (Volume 16)

by Bruce E. Cain

Epic wildfire. Devastating drought. Cataclysmic flooding. Extreme weather in the wake of climate change threatens to turn the American West into a region hostile to human habitation—a “Great American Desert,” as early US explorers once mislabeled it. As Bruce E. Cain suggests in this timely book, the unique complex of politics, technology, and logistics that once won the West must be rethought and reconfigured to win it anew in the face of a widespread accelerating threat.

The challenges posed by increasingly extreme weather in the West are complicated by the region’s history, the deliberate fractiousness of the American political system, and the idiosyncrasies of human behavior—all of which Cain considers, separately and together, in Under Fire and Under Water . He analyzes how, in spite of coastal flooding and spreading wildfires, people continue to move into, and even rebuild in, risky areas; how local communities are slow to take protective measures; and how individual beliefs, past adaptation practices and infrastructure, and complex governing arrangements across jurisdictions combine to flout real progress. Driving Cain’s analysis is the conviction that understanding the habits and politics that lead to procrastination and obstruction is critical to finding solutions and making necessary adaptations to the changing climate.

As a detailed look at the rising stakes and urgency of the various interconnected issues, this book is an important first step toward that understanding—and consequently toward the rethinking and reengineering that will allow people to live sustainably in the American West under the conditions of future global warming.
 

166 pages, Hardcover

Published November 14, 2023

Reviews

[Judd Street · Rating 4 out of 5]

The American West has long been portrayed as a land of extremes, where sharp canyons, scalding deserts, and rugged mountains shape its history and its future alike. Extreme, too, are its hazards, as a region characterized by periodic wildfires, droughts, floods, and earthquakes, to name a few. These hazards serve as a perpetual—and sometimes tragic—reminder that, despite “overcoming” many geophysical extremes, the American West remains an “untamed” landscape, at least in the experience of settlers whose paradigms still often reflect a desire for colonizing mastery.

These hazards are interconnected, often cascading into one another, and are worsening. Wildfires born of climate change, historical over-suppression, and ignitions from growing populations create the conditions for flood runoff and drinking water contamination, while temperature extremes stress electrical grids and power lines drop, sparking ignitions. “The American West,” argues author Bruce E. Cain, “must be reengineered for people and businesses to live more sustainably in it under the conditions of future global warming” (p. 4).

As Cain rightfully points out in Under Fire and Under Water: Wildfire, Flooding, and the Fight for Climate Resilience in the American West, these are not merely technical challenges. Instead, the core project of the book is to argue that this is a “formidable political problem, coming at a time when the US political system is itself stressed by rising polarization, globalization, social media, rising inequality, and resurging racial tensions” (p. 4). Through chapters compiled from a series of lectures Cain prepared for the Julian J. Rothbaum Lecture Series at the University of Oklahoma, Cain lays out these sociopolitical difficulties in responding in a more sustainable, comprehensive, bipartisan, and effective way to the impacts of climate on wildfire, flooding, and electrical systems.

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