Experts say California’s wildfires will keep getting more destructive and deadly because the government wages a war on fire. The underbrush that builds up as the perfect tinder and kindling for uncontrollable wildfires, needs to burn off periodically, but the government tries to extinguish even ‘good fires’. Now, some 20 million acres need to be burned intentionally, but culture, greed, liability laws, and good intentions may prevent it.
Background Resource: They Know How to Prevent Megafires. Why Won’t Anybody Listen? [Mother Jones, September 2, 2020]
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Bill Whittle Network · End California's War on Fire: Experts Say 'Let It Burn', and Even Start 'Good' Fires
16 replies on “End California’s War on Fire: Experts Say ‘Let It Burn’, and Even Start ‘Good’ Fires”
Bill’s comments about an adult going to the dentist reminds me of a story where a fictional mage healer type was speaking with a patient and fellow healer about they healing they did and how he found it harder to work on the non-sentient creatures because he could not explain to them that he would hurt them a little now to make them feel better later. He pointed out that you could explain that to a thinking person (which the fellow healer mostly healed but was having some story plot related problems).
John Sullivan’s point about pursuing short term gain and ignoring long term consequences seems to hit Bill’s idea on the head. The politicians are like children as Bill said, and keep grabbing the candy now and not caring it will spoil their appetite for supper later, leading to hunger pains soon after. (Oddly this was the same complaint against big businesses, putting quarterly profits for better stock prices ahead of long term stability).
I used to take my classes up to Science-Conservation (SciCon) Camp every spring. On one morning I would arrange for a U.S. Forest Ranger to speak to the group and then direct us in a tree-planting exercise. He/She would always emphasize how important it was to have controlled burns of all the brush that grows under the trees each year. They also made a point of clearing the area near power lines and replacing the old lines.
This practice continued as long as we had Republicans as Governors and a majority in the Assembly and Senate. We did not have these horrendous fires like we see now. Over 600 fires burning across the state last week, down to 500 now. They are all around our area and many close to us are being evacuated.
I pray for you!! I live in northern California and I wake up and go to bed to the smell of smoke and burning mattresses…It’s always smoky or as the weather channel tells me ‘hazy’ and it’s currently 111 degrees. Thought I might add Governor Newsom is incompetent and wealthy from OUR tax $$ and certainly doesn’t know diddily about running one of the largest economies in the US!!
“Newsom is incompetent and wealthy from OUR tax $$ and certainly doesn’t know diddily about running one of the largest economies in the US”
Unfortunately, he seems to be an expert at *ruining* that same economy.
P.S. I’m up here in the Bay Area and this is the longest and worst smoke I’ve seen.
I’m here, too. I agree.
Almost every aspect of fuzzy headed liberalism fits this pattern that should be obvious to anyone with a functioning brain, short term feel good virtue signaling leading to long term disaster.
Paying mothers with small children as long as there’s no man around leads to an epidemic of fatherless children and the resultant crime and yet more generations of fatherless children.
No new power plants either nuclear of conventional leads to brown outs and probably more deaths than the plants themselves would ever have caused.
Increased taxes leading to less growth requiring more taxes leading to less growth etc
You could apply the same template to every liberal ‘solution’ .
I remember some time not too long ago, but I don’t know exactly when, only that there were fires here in CA…last year? I have lost track of time because..plague. The fires were up in mid and northern CA and were out of hand as usual. CA Gov asked Trump for money. Trump said he gave them $75mil to clear out the brush, like Bill was talking about, and to help prevent the spread of inevitable fires.
CA used the money on something else like providing phones and health care and portable air conditioners to illegal aliens and those that chose not to work and live in…provided tents. Yes. That is true…especially in Sacramento. Trump said NO, I gave you money for that already. And then the blaming of the fire on Trump ensued.
People who live in those fire prone areas are now paying exorbitant insurance fees. They can’t sell their houses as the new owners will not only pay extremely high property taxes, but also Over the Top insurance rates. And that will likely not end anytime soon.
Fire Departments all over CA wanted to help clear out those areas but there was no money allocated for that. And so, it goes on. I can’t wait to leave here.
Where would you go? If you don’t mind my asking ….
Looking in Alabama…red state for over 40 years. Or Tennessee….good tax benes. Although they are in the ‘east.’ and I am a CA girl. Might just move to Idaho. Thought about Texas but everyone is moving there. Waiting for the plague to be over.
I seem to recall that at Yellowstone (and other national parks), the NPS refuse (or refused?) to put out any naturally-occurring fire at all, no matter the risk to persons and property. They would put out man-caused fires (which presumes that they can tell the difference). They were doing what environmental extremists always do, which is assume that man’s interference is Always Bad and therefore we must pretend that man doesn’t exist and let whatever happens happen.
What’s missing here is the notion of actual conservation, of management. People and nature have to coexist. Neither extreme produces the best results. Management can be overdone, whether you’re talking about putting out every fire or trying to control the Mississippi River. Eventually nature will come along and burn that dry acre or change the course of the river. But Bill is right, of course, human nature runs counter to that.
(N.B. It’s possible that the NPS has adjusted their policy about fire management. I haven’t read or heard anything about it for quite a long time, and I’m far too lazy to research it right this minute!)
I agree a balanced approach to fire and environmental management is required. Somewhere I picked up the idea that the NPS were treating the national parks as more “wild” and natural, so leaving them to burn from lightning when that happened, but willing to be more proactive in national forest areas, doing pre-burning, etc. in part due to the commercial value of contracting out the forests for logging, recreation, etc.
OT: I wonder how I could have gone for 6+ decades without seeing or learning about the abbreviation NB for nota bene or “note well” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nota_bene ).
And all of a sudden in the last year I am seeing it “all of the time”. 🙂
Maybe I am now finding a higher class of author/essayist than in the past.
I live in northeast Florida where the state does controlled burns in the Osceola National Forest several times a year because of all the lightening strikes we have. And guess what – we don’t have huge, out of control fires taking out homes and wiping out towns – but hey, Florida’s state government is run by conservatives, so go figure.
The analogies here to accepting an initial low pain to avoid a later catastrophic pain are legend. Two that came immediately to mind for me were:
1) Keynes idea of having government spend to create demand during the bad times in the business cycle vs.then needing to save up tax revenue funding during the good times so money was available for the bad times. No one saves during the good times, as they can’t stand the political pain of not spending money when they have it (or can more easily borrow more of it).
2) Entitlement reform – each year that passes and adds more and more retirees to the pool of people needing or expecting SS and Medicare support (which they “paid for” but not exactly), further increasing the political pain of acting to correct our deficit/ debt/ liabilities situation. Increasing the SS retirement age* over time and decreasing the payouts by 20% or so are relatively painless options right now to restore fiscal sanity, but total collapse in 15 to 25 years will most likely because no action is forthcoming now.
*My age #’s here may be off a little but show the point, as from my memory: in 1935 they arbitrarily set the SS retirement age at 65 when the male mortality average was 63 and the female # was 68 (hoping to avoid any more payouts than necessary?). Now the #’s are closer to 78 and 83, respectively, suggesting that the SS retirement age today should be 80, not 66 or 67.
Don’t forget that mankind is the coronavirus of the earth. We’re not supposed to intervene in nature because we’re destroying the planet, right? Never mind that putting out the fires is counteracting what actually occurs in nature.
Then, when the inevitable consequence comes along, suddenly we’re supposed to intervene because people don’t want nature to do what it does. Shouldn’t Californians surrender to the infernos and let themselves be destroyed? No humans is good, right?
It’s sheer stupidity.
Follow the money. Which accounts for more spending the politicians don’t have? Small frequent and self limiting fires or as frequent out of control fire storms. The fire storms win on both the spending front as well as aggrandizing governmental power and control. Hence, fire storms it is as far as the eye can see.
The fix? Better people in government who are willing and able to make intelligent long term decisions.
How to do that? Make sure We the People are willing and able to make intelligent long term decisions about who is going to be our political leaders.
But but but that means more spending now with the only payoff is much less spending in the future. We the People have chosen to spend less money now by pretending there won’t be the need to spend more money in the future. The politicians that We the People select under this principle will always want to spend more money in the future and spend now on only their pet projects. They achieve their and our goal. It is guaranteed that more money will be spent in the future until society collapses into ruin. See California for instructive detail.
As they say: “Beam me up Scotty. There is no intelligent life on this planet worth worrying about.”