Attempts to pin the catastrophic California wildfires on the bogeyman of “climate change” are a deflection from the real culprits, the Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote Monday. [emphasis, links added]
The climate left is desperately trying to “change the subject from the failure of the state and local government to contain the fires that often accompany Santa Ana winds,” the WSJ editors note.
The op-ed first dismantles the ridiculous claim that climate change somehow caused the conflagration and then shows how state and local governments, and Gov. Gavin Newsom in particular, have abdicated their important role of protecting California residents from wildfire.
For eco-lefties, “climate change explains wet and dry seasons, which follows the progressive line that climate change is responsible for every natural disaster except for perhaps earthquakes,” the essay observes. “In today’s climate orthodoxy, bad weather is always man-made.”
The editors proceed to reproduce a chart from the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment that shows precipitation in the state going back 130 or so years.
The chart does not show a trend but rather recurring wet and dry spells, with the latter being especially prevalent in the 1910s and 1920s “when carbon emissions were far less than they are today,” the editors explain.
While climate is ever-changing, “variable rain and snowfall patterns in California are to be expected,” the editors write, and fires “will occur as a result.”
“Rather than blame the climate for wildfires,” they suggest, “the obligation of public officials should be to prepare for them and, when they inevitably occur, mitigate the damage.”
This is, of course, precisely what California’s political leaders have failed to do, and appear determined to keep doing.
NEW: The LA Times reports LA Mayor Karen Bass was at an embassy cocktail party in Ghana when the #PalisadesFire first broke out last Tuesday. Bass had left LA days beforehand, as weather forecasts were predicting a serious wind event & major fire risk.https://t.co/RUJXE1UT3s
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) January 15, 2025
Gavin Newsom’s newly introduced budget “skimps on wildfire prevention while boosting spending on Medicaid, green energy, and payoffs to the teachers’ unions,” the essay states.
Despite a revenue windfall, the proposed California state budget “cuts the CAL FIRE’s ‘resource management’ program by half from 2023 to $466.5 million,” the op-ed reveals.
Meanwhile, none of the proposed new spending “will mitigate future fires, droughts or floods or have any impact on global temperatures,” the editors contend.
Conspiracy theorist/FEMA Director Deanne Criswell (@FEMA_Deanne): "With climate change, we are seeing an increase in severe weather events and catastrophic impacts as a result of those events" pic.twitter.com/w8mbgguct1
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) January 13, 2025
“Despite their fervent belief that climate change will have catastrophic consequences, Democrats in California perennially underinvest in water storage and land management,” they argue.
Then when fires, water shortages, or floods inevitably happen, “Democrats blame climate change as if there is nothing they could do about any of it,” they write, concluding that what the state really needs is “political climate change.”
Top image via CNN/YouTube screencap
Read more at Breitbart
The M.S. Media Bottom Feeders and Gutter Dwellers are always blaming everything on all t hose who don’t vote for them
If the authorities in LA truly believe that climate change is making wild fires more frequent and intense, then that makes them even more derelict in their duties. If they believed their climate change excuse, then the LA fire department would have been one of the best staffed in the nation, rather than the one of the worst. If they believed their excuse, then building permits would not have been issued in high fire risk areas. Where building was allowed, proper forest management would have been applied to the vegetation. If he believed climate change made wild fires worse, Governor Newsom wouldn’t have let the bureaucrats divert the voter approved $2.7 billion for water storage to green projects. If they truly believed their story on climate change, then the infrastructure would have supported the needs of fighting large fires. Both the city of LA and its fire department had as their very top priority Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. If they believed in the increased risk due to climate change, their top priorities would have been a well staffed fire department, an infrastructure that could perform well under the stress of a massive fire, and water storage.
Although Bjorn Lomborg continues to believe that the climate is changing due to humans burning fossil fuels he is a strong proponent of doing the things this column talks about–spend money to make the environment more resilient to fires, floods, droughts, etc. That is FAR cheaper and better both for humans and the environment than what the left are doing in western countries (notice China, India and other countries are continuing to develop their resources to strengthen their economies and hence make their citizens better off.