There has been more than $2 billion spent on fire suppression efforts so far this budget year in the US (the budget year runs from October 1 through September 30), according to the US Forest Service. Image by Daria Devyatkina (some rights reserved) That figure represents a substantial increase from the previous record year of 2015, which saw the agency spend $1.7 billion on fire suppression efforts. To be clear here, these figures relate solely to US Forest Service costs and don’t include figures from federal, state, or local firefighting agencies. Altogether, 2017 has been an unprecedented year in the US (and in many other parts of the world as well) with regard to forest fires. At this point, it should be clear that the predictions that wildfires will become increasingly common and severe over the course of the century as a result of anthropogenic climate change have something […]