Hello from Washington. I'm Chuck Todd, and this is the Chuck Todd cast.

While our attention is focused on the devastating wildfires in California,

there are many questions. We're all asking about how common we should expect wildfires to be in our future or other climate-related natural disasters

that are more likely to occur now than they did some 20 or 30 years ago.

What can be done to prevent them?

What resiliency works?

And then, of course, the biggest thing that I think anybody who's lived in a sort of climate changed geographic area, insurance, is it still

going to be there?

Is it reliable?

Can we afford it?

And I do think in that sense, this is where there's a commonality across the country with

what's happening in California.

My guest today is the governor of Colorado.

Jared Polis, his state, has more than 24 million acres of forest land. It's bigger than the state

of West Virginia. And about two-thirds of that is managed by the federal government in 2020.

While during the governorship of Polis, the first term, he had to deal with one of the biggest wildfires in the state's history, the Cameron Peak Fire, where the most, you know, one of the more famous parts of that, they had to evacuate Estes Park.

And for those of us that have spent time, I briefly lived in Boulder back in the 90s when I was in my 20s.

Estes Park is sort of was, that's where you went to go officially try to hike the Rockies, if you will.

It was sort of like the introductory place to go to go figure out how to navigate and hike the Rocky Mountains, at least if

you lived in the Denver or Boulder metro area.

And it was a scary time at that time in Colorado.

They had all sorts of air quality issues.

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