New Books Network Thomas Princen, "Fire and Flood: Extreme Events and Social Change Past, Present, Future" (MIT Press, 2025)
Nov 29, 2025
Thomas Princen, an associate professor at the University of Michigan, focuses on sustainability and the ethics of resource use. He discusses how personal experiences, like the Sonoma fires, inspired his research on extreme events. Princen differentiates resilience from climate adaptation and highlights local signals that inspire societal change. He explores the challenges of rebuilding in disaster-prone areas, the need for broader policy links, and advocates for a proactive fire ethic to encourage adaptive living with natural hazards.
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Personal Fire Experience Sparked The Book
- Thomas Princen describes a Sonoma County wildfire that came into his town and personally shook him.
- That event prompted him to study other extreme events and the broader social meaning of disasters.
Signals Of Uninhabitability In Coastal Zones
- Princen argues Galveston/Houston shows natural and human-driven processes making places uninhabitable.
- He suggests a shift inland and upland is already underway and necessary.
Local Events, Societal Lessons
- Extreme-event signals are inherently local, and people interpret them locally or ignore them.
- Lasting social change more often comes from those outside the immediate event who read societal-level lessons.
