California’s Wildfires Exposed Failings of the State’s Leadership
Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic lawmakers are sure to lecture us again this session about the need to step up our efforts to combat climate change. Here’s a fun fact you can use to counter them, courtesy of University of Chicago research: 2020’s wildfires emitted “close to double (the state’s) emissions reductions achieved over 16 years.”
That’s right, one wildfire year obliterated decades of costly, painstaking efforts to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions. And 2020’s fires were far less severe than the horrific ones we’ve recently witnessed in the Los Angeles area. We get wildfires nearly every year, which are constantly incinerating our climate goals. So there’s no need to argue over climate science, something—if we’re honest with ourselves—few of us know much about.
But any midwit can realize the state’s $54 billion climate action budgets, $100-billion-plus effort to build a bullet train, and policies to outlaw internal combustion engines are for naught if it doesn’t get serious about wildfire prevention. California emits an almost imperceptible amount of the Earth’s emissions (thank you, India and China!), but whatever cutbacks we make are literally going up in smoke.
California should, then, follow a University of Chicago conclusion: “Wildfire emissions need to be a key part of climate policy if California is going to meet its emission reduction goals.” Instead, Newsom and company use climate change as an excuse, suggesting in essence that their hands are tied until we reverse the Earth’s climate trajectory.
In their view, increased heat is leading to more wildfires so the state should double down on its policies to reduce emissions. They have it roughly backward. State policymakers need to embrace policies that control wildfires, which are rendering useless our climate agenda. But to do so would expose state leaders for their incompetence.
I’m not talking about their specific reactions to the latest fires, although Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’ deer-in-the-headlights response to a reporter’s questions as she exited a plane from Ghana will surely be a “what not to” example in crisis-public-relations training. I’m referring to the confluence of years-in-the-making California policies that have exacerbated the wildfires and the state’s response to them.
First, the Newsom administration has talked on occasion about the need to step up brush clearance to remove the tinder. True to form, he hasn’t done much about it other than earmark some dollars. The state clears maybe 125,000 acres of brush from its 19 million acres of forest (plus another 14 million that are federally owned). The state requires multiple lengthy approvals for forest-clearing projects and impedes property owners who want to fire-harden their ho
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