We wouldn't call this enhanced wildfire risk a problem exactly

It is sometimes necessary to properly examine a statement before coming to any useful conclusion about that same statement:

Wildfires will pose a greater socioeconomic risk in years to come, scientists have predicted, as they increasingly burn agricultural areas and harm populations.

A study uses machine learning to model where wildfires are likely to strike in coming years, and their impact on humanity.

We agree, that doesn’t exactly sound good, but what is the driving force here?

This, the researchers said, is because: “Such elevated socioeconomic risks are primarily caused by the compound regional enhancement of future wildfire activity and socioeconomic development in the western and central African countries, necessitating an emergent strategic preparedness to wildfires in these countries.”

What they mean is that western and central Africa is going to become richer, therefore there will be something of value in those areas to burn. The wildfires aren’t exactly desirable, agreed, but hundreds of millions of people rising up out of historic and abject poverty seems a good result to us.

This all being something we think is underappreciated. Yes, it’s true, the standard models - all of those used by the IPCC and so on - do indeed say that emissions could rise dependent upon the technological path taken. Note could - there are paths where this does not happen, at least not to what even the IPCC considers dangerous levels. But all of those models also include the poor of the world getting rich.

As with this study this is one of the, perhaps the, major drivers of those worries about increased damages from events. A richer world simply has more to be damaged. It is the nett position that matters to human welfare and it is only at the very extremes of predictions that this becomes negative overall.