Works at Stanford on equitable climate and energy law/policy with a big helping of wildfire and insurance.
Michael Wara
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And also, the whole damn place is a crazy fire hazard. Some of the buildings still have wood shake roofs!!! All are wood shingle sided. No zone zero anywhere. This is a state park I’m pretty sure.
May 2026 had the second-worst May drought conditions in contiguous U.S. history, with a Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) of -6.93. The only worse May: the Dust Bowl year of 1934 (a PDSI of -7.03). Three of the top-10 months for worst U.S. drought since 1895 have been in 2026:
This is the kind of thing that I hope the next governor (as has Newsom) will focus on. It is not the kind of thing that will create MOUs at international meetings. It is the kind of thing that will ultimately end our dependence on fossil fuels and reduce our vulnerability to their price swings. .
Few roads out, higher wildfire risk: New study maps Bay Area evacuation danger— @michaelwara.bsky.social senior research scholar at Stanford University’s @woods.stanford.edu Woods Institute for the Environment, said… www.mercurynews.com/2026/06/08/i... @ethan-baron.bsky.social @mercurynews.com
California is now home to the first major battery installation in the U.S. that can supply electricity for eight hours rather than four — a big step toward 24/7 clean energy: www.canarymedia.com/articles/lon... via @canarymedia.com
To me, this looks like a setup for the kind of fire season Australia experienced in 2019-2020. But there’s plenty of time for nature to give us an off-ramp from that future. And I’ll certainly welcome that luck.
If you change “may” to “will” I agree with this headline.
www.cnbc.com/2026/06/06/c...
Sitting at Asilomar listening to Tim Profeta talk about climate litigation with a bunch of judges. Lovely and depressing
I take solace in that Asilomar is such a timeless place to think about hard problems for society.
