Between the raging wildfires and the blackouts, California is now offering an abject lesson in the perils of wishful thinking. The state’s leaders may blame climate change or big utility companies, but in reality, it’s their own damn fault.
By Monday morning, Pacific Gas and Electric had broken its record for households blacked out — the company’s effort to avoid the downed live power lines that can start fires. Yet high (but not record-setting) wind gusts are still triggering wildfires, and not just in PG&E’s service area.
Why have 10 of the state’s 20 largest, most deadly fires ever occurred in the last decade? Because its forests are now twice as dense as they were 150 years ago — when the population was a fraction of today’s.
Behind that unnatural density: state and federal rules that make it near-impossible (and insanely expensive) to lay a finger on any of this precious overgrowth.
Green sentiment has beaten back the timber industry, which might have put life-saving access roads into wild areas. It has prevented controlled burns (for fear of disrupting animal habitats) and barred even minor brush-clearing programs.
When last summer’s disastrous fire killed 85, the state found a reason to blame PG&E — which was sued into bankruptcy and is still deep in Chapter 11. (Utilities that aren’t privately owned, meanwhile, don’t face the same liability under California law.) Hence its precautionary blackouts now.
And since it’ll be years before the utility can secure its lines against high winds, its customers must now expect rolling blackouts every fall when the powerful, hot “El Diablo” winds roll in.
President Trump had it right last summer: “There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor.”
On his final day in office, Gov. Jerry Brown admitted as much by quietly signing bills removing impediments to “controlled burns” and allotting $190 million a year to “improve forest health and fire prevention.”
But that’s not remotely enough: California’s Forestry Department would like to double its amount of tree and brush thinning over the next five years — but isn’t sure it can.
Its deputy director, Helge Eng, sees “a significant public-education campaign ahead of us as foresters to get the public to understand” how dangerously unnatural it is to not thin out forests.
Read more at NY Post
So the great piles of fuel that California’s forest have become is another environmental alarmist fears that have cause greater damage and risk to wildlife, forests, the environment, and humans.
Par for the course for environmentally-driven policies.
Years ago, Sam Kinison famously told starving Africans to “get outta the desert. There’s no food in the desert” Californians expecting their state government to behave responsibly need to consider moving. There’s no sanity in Sacramento.
Let’s face it. Environmental NGO’s have been getting a “hall pass” on any number of adverse outcomes over many years (now) that result from questionable environmental litigation. Controlled burns/brush removal in California is just the latest example but somehow, these activists always seem to be absent from the discussion when it comes to accountability. I think it is about time for a concerted effort to educate the public about the MANY poor policy decisions that are being driven by environmental extremists. If you are ever going to fix a problem, you have to do an HONEST assessment of the circumstances. No reason the Sierra Club, WildEarth Guardians et al should be getting a “free skate”…
Randy, somewhere there’s a tombstone with HONEST engraved into it. I might be wrong, it could be a myth.
I guess as a front line oil & gas operative that saw the increasing level of dishonesty with many of the environmental NGO’s, I suppose I have grown tired of their narrative. For a long time, I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt that perhaps, while being passionate they were not fully informed on scientific or technical issues regarding responsible energy production & sensible environmental protection. I no longer suffer from that delusion…
The Sierra Club can always count on Hollywood Green Hypotcrite Robert Redford to do junk mail things for them like just about all Hollywood Liberals they always like to do stuff for the various Eco-Freak groups ever while he has done ads for United Airlines while opposng drilling he sells property to developers
The Californians fleeing to other states realize insanity is incurable. A beautiful state is being destroyed by eco-communism.