More frequent skin tense. Joining me to explain why is scott stevens, professor of fire science at uc berkeley, welcome. So far this year weve been hundreds of square miles of acreage burned in wildfires in california. How does this compare to previous years . Southern california and Central California are ahead. I think weve had a real dry period in southern california. El nino year, usually that means 150 precipitation in southern cal, this year they got about 75 . Very dry. They really are ahead, they have really dry conditions. North of the golden gate we havent had that many fires. As you alluded to theres a terrible fire in lake county. Will things get worse as september and october roll around . Thats when the santa ana winds kick in. Thats right. We go into later into the season, we would expect worse conditions. Especially in southern california. The santa anas come in october, november. Really severe winds out of the east. Thats our worst season. California has had five years of drought. How does Climate Change exacerbate Drought Conditions and the fire danger that comes with that . It really increases the temperature so we do have drought like you mention. Weve had droughts in the past but we dont have hot droughts as much as today. The hotness of the drought causes vegetation to dry faster, so it predispolicies the fuel bed to more flammability. What are we looking at, is in the new normal with all these intense fires occurring more frequently . There is in some ways especially the shrub lands. They turn eped socally and burn stand replacement. Nose systems are predisposed to big fires. Climate change is going to make that more difficult, more drought, more variability. The forests are a different condition. You can do some things to them to predispose them to reduce the potential for bad fire, bad fire effects. Cant really do that in shrub lands. Why cant you do that with chaparral, for example . Chaparral, you cant underburn it. You can do some treatments like chip and it do things like that. Sometimes that has bad ecological consequences like nonnative plants increase. So when you try to do work with it, you can burn it and cause a mosaic of vegetation. But under severe conditions like santa anna, even the mosaic can be overdone bit wind. So from a Forest Management perspective, what can be done to reduce the impact of wildfires . What we need to do is restoration at scale. What that means is essentially trying to reduce the density of trees, reduce the density of shrubs. The surface fuel, the wood on the ground. We want to reduce it. We want to get it to a point when it does burn, we have a fiveyear drought, essentially maybe 70 of the forest survives. So actually the forest continues, evolves, all that goes on, instead of having these large mortality patches where we lose everything. Were going to work on the forests before the fire, before the drought, so we can set it up to be more resilient. And trees do have an incredible amount of survivability when it comes to fires. You brought an example of a tree. Show us what the rings on it demonstrate. Sure. This is a Ponderosa PineCross Section from a piece of wood just outside of quincy, california, northern Sierra Nevada. What this shows is a sequence of injuries. The injuries are recorded for individual fires. So the fire comes and burns at the base of the tree and causes an injury, small lesion. The lesion is recorded in the tree ring. This particular tree has about 20 different fire scars. It survived 20 fires in its lifetime. The first around 1650. The last one around ape 50. What does this tell us about how we can do controlled burns . What that tells us is we go into the site, we start to manipulate them by burning or thinning or combinations of burning and thing. Were right inside the ecology of the organism. Its actually an organism thats really adapted to frequent disturbance so we can go in there five years, 15 years, work with it, reduce density, do some burning and were inside the ecology of the ecosystem. Is the u. S. Forest service doing anything now to update its forest remanagement practices . They are. Right now in the southern Sierra Nevada were going through a Land Management revision process. This hasnt happened since 1985. That long . 1985. Climate change wasnt even on the radar then. Now the inyo, sequoia, and Sierra National forests are going through Land Management revision. Theyre thinking about resiliency, about Climate Change, about fire, and trying to come up with a way to manage forests. In your research you have said that that type of forestry management, they need to do it ten times, at ten times the level what theyre doing now. Is the plan they have in place good enough to achieve that . I think it is. The plan, ive looked at them, theyre looking forward, thinking about managing lightning fire, remote areas to get more fire on the ground ecologically, thinking about restoration. Youre right, ten times the current level is the back of the envelope calculation and sometimes people think, thats nuts. But if you dont change trajectory on these forests and build resiliency into them, integrate it, were going to set ourselves up for catastrophic outcomes in the the future. Weve been seeing footage of the fires here and you have to feel for those families. The tens of thousands of families that have to evacuate because of wildfires. Especially bad in lake county, they saw the same thing happen last year. How should Land ManagementStrategy Change to mitigate loss of life and property . That is a real challenge. The way we built in our environment frankly doesnt take fire into account. Thats kind of a sad thing. We have housed disperses in Ponderosa Pine forests, chaparral. We can try to get people to revise their outside of their houses with flameresistant materials. Try to reduce vegetation near your home. Try to make it less vulnerable to ember attack. Embers come in from the wind and start small spot fires. The other thing in the future is better Land Management planning, land use planning, try to put houses in places that are less vulnerable to fire. So that is a real effort for the entire state. So what happens in 20, 30 years from now, if we dont do anything . I think what happens is we continue to chase our tail. And it gets worse. Eventually were going to have so many large first the rim, king, Sierra Nevada they begin to fragment our landscapes. That makes us nervous. Wildlife habitat, all sorts of things. If we dont change trajectory in 30 years our kids and grandkids will have a different experience. Forests will be fragmented. There will be forests. Low density, shrubs, standing snags, less forest cover. It will be a different environment. But essentially we have to thats why i think we have 25, 30 years to begin that transformation. Are you hopeful . That we can make that transformation . Im very hopeful. Because the research we have shows we can do it inside the ecology. Weve shown that. Others have shown it. I think forests soar important in this state. So important for water, wildlife, carbon, aesthetics. We cant led them go to the back, go negative. I am hopeful. I think the people of california and managers of california forests really want this to happen. Im hopeful it could happen. Scott stevens, thank you for that explanation on wildfires and the science of it all. Scott stevens, uc berkeley professor of fire science. On to politics. A look at a ballot measure that tackles Prescription Drug pricing. Lets send the Greedy Drug Companies and the rest of the country a loud message. No more profits over patients. Look into the facts about the misleading state drug Contracting Initiative and youll see that its a problem masquerading as a solution. Every year the state of california pays billions of dollars for Prescription Drugs for retired public employees, lowincome residents on medical, and prisoners. Prop 61 aims to lower the price of those drugs. Kqed Senior Editor for politics and government scott shafer has more. Proposition 61 on the November Ballot would prevent state agencies from paying more for Prescription Drugs than what the u. S. Department of Veterans Affairs pays. Va is allowed to negotiate for lower prices on behalf of roughly 9 million veterans. Joining me to discuss the pros and cons of prop 61 are roger salazar, spokesman for yes on proposition 61. And kathy fairbanks, spokeswoman for no. Welcome to both of you. Roger, youre in favor of this. How byte work . Basically, its very simple. All the measure does is simply tie the amount of money that the state of california pays for the Prescription Drugs that it purchases as a payee to the same price, to the lowest price of what the u. S. Department of Veterans Affairs pays. This is a starting point. I think californians are tired of high drug prices. The price gouging going on by the drug industry. This is the first step in trying to rein in those prices. Its something the legislature or congress has not done californians are taking this on themselves. You say its simple yet the legislation analyst says its not simple at all, there are a lot of aspects theyre not sure how its going to be implemented. I think some of the uncertainty is based on the threats that are coming from the drug industry. The drug industry is threatening to raise prices so therefore that creates uncertainty. The drug industry is threatening to pull out. These are things that are not in the measure but are threats were hearing from the drug indust industry. Based on the information va has to give and its unclear whether the state can get that information . Theres nothing under law that prevents va from showing what their prices are. In fact, weve done it through our freedom of information act requests. Weve been able to do so. Theres nothing in the law that prevents them from doing that. We think that anybody who says that you cant get it is simply not wanting to put in the effort and the work to do it. A huge amount of money has been raised to defeat this. 70 million, more than any other ballot measure for or against. Why do the Drug Companies feel so strongly . What is the threat exactly . Well, theres a whole bunch of threats. You pointed to a few. Its not just the industry thats engaged, its more than 130 other groups representing doctors, Patient Advocates, veterans, taxpayers, civil rights groups, business groups, labor unions. All are opposed to prop 61. Because it is very complicated as you pointed out. But the vast majority of the money comes from Drug Companies that is true. That initiative would upend agreements that pharmaceutical manufacturers currently have with the various state health care programs, possibly with the va. Its a market shift. And it would require the industry to renegotiate a lot of those contracts and it threatens the relationships that some of the companies have with the state. The most important part though is the loss of these contracts. It threatens profits too for the Drug Companies, right . Well, i dont know that id say that. I think its more that this changes the way the marketplace works. When you think about what the va program was created for, and rogers right, it is a program or it is a the va gets low prices for pharmaceutical drugs. It was created as a special program just for the va. It was never expected to be expanded to other agencies. Why shouldnt it somebody how do consumers benefit when the government cant negotiate better prices as they do in other countries . U. S. Is one of the few countries that cant do that. No, the state of california does negotiate with pharmaceutical manufacturers for drug prices. They negotiate very heavily. The department of Health Care Services which oversees medical fee for service, they negotiate very heavily. Cal pers negotiates the department of General Services which oversees for the prisons and local hospitals. The federal government for the Affordable Care act, for example, and the Prescription Drug expansion under president george w. Bush, theyre prohibited, the government is prohibited i dont know that thats the case. I believe it is. Okay, well, it doesnt matter. This isnt going to affect the federal government. Its not going to affect this program. Its going to affect californians. One of the claims your campaign makes is that if this occurs, and if these prices are linked to the va, that prices are going to go up for veterans. Theres nothing in prop 61 that says that . Thats correct, thats correct. But this program, the same type of thing extending va prices to other agency, was tried in the early 1990s called obra. Prices to va went up, congress repealed the law because of that. Why did they go up . Basically youre saying the Drug Companies would raise prices on veterans . It could happen. Were not saying it will happen. All of this is as the lao pointed out a very complicated issue. And it depend on this the negotiations between the companies, the state, the va. One of the things we havent touched on that the lao touched on was the fact that the va prices that prop 61 is linked to arent even public. State law like prop 61, which is statutory initiatives, cant override federal law. So its not true that the prices could become public. Some of that information is protected and there are exemptions to the freedom of information act. Yeah, but we were able to determine what those prices were. No yes, we have. And again, i think whats interesting to me here, and look, we understand that the drug industrys going to be spending upwards of 70 million, some say up to 100 million, to try and defeat this initiative. Its not because they want to see lower drug prices. Its not because theyre afraid not enough people are going be covered. Theyre afraid that this is going to basically start a tide from california all across the country there are also a lot of patient advocate groups, hiv groups, diabetes, theyre concerned its going to have a negative impact on them. A lot of its there are a lot of the fearmongering, the fear thats being raised by the drug industry saying there are threats theyre going to raise prices. Also to be frank a lot of it has to do with the fact that a lot of these groups are beholden financially to the drug industry. So i hear the arguments from the drug industry where they say, look, not enough people are covered and i think thats ludicrous. The drug industry arguing theyre opposed to a drug relief measure because not enough people are being covered is like nra saying they dont like gun control because not enough guns are covered, its ridiculous. A measure in the legislature that died this week to explain when the drug prices go up, the bill died in the assembly, and pharma opposed it. Im not working for pharma but thats whos funding i cant speak to that bill, i didnt work on that bill. I can tell you that the supporters of that bill made it clear they intend to come back next year and the year after that and the year after that and try to move another bill similarly through the legislature. I would argue that is where policy ought to be done. This is whats wrong with proposition 61. Youve got one entity, the aids health care foundation, bankrolling the entire thing. They had their lawyer draft it in secret, didnt show it to anybody before it was put on the ballot. Wasnt shared with prominent hiv groups, i know that. And you cant theres no opportunity to identify flaws like there is in the legislature. How would you advise how are you going to convince Patient Advocates and people who have diabetes and hiv and Kidney Disease who are concerned about this that they should vote are to it . Again, we have to have a starting point from this. The examples that you just mentioned in the legislature where they couldnt even pass a transparency bill, how do we think were going to be able to pass a drug pricing bill in the legislature if they cant even pass something that just deals with let us know what the costs are and how you come up with your costs. One of the things were going to be doing as we talk to voters, first of all, theyre already with us. All the polling weve done shows that this has upwards of 70 approval from the voters. They are sick and tired of these high drug prices. If we can convince voters this is a start in lowering those drug prices, theyre going to be with us. Wouldnt you agree as a consumer at least drug prices are very expensive in many cases . Gilead had a 1,000 a pill hepatitis c drug, for example. Those things make a lot of news and fuel support for things like this, dont they . I think thats a very good argument to make for the yes on 61 side. Certainly tap into peoples concerns about Higher Health costs. The thing that we havent heard yet is how will proposition 61 work in the real world, how will it lower drug prices . Lao has acknowledged that the medical fee for service, the state, the largest state program covered by prop 61 could face higher costs. Not lower costs, higher costs. Thats because theyre worried about the threats of the Drug Companies increasing the prices. No we believe that if we can have an impact at the beginning with just first of all, the state of california pays 4 billion for Prescription Drug prices. If were able to get the same discounts we get from va, 24 discount, that saves the state about 1 billion a year. That kind of pressure, its going to lead to other state agencies wanting it, its going to lead to private entities w