The wildfires in the Los Angeles area are terrifying, but that hasn’t stopped people from blaming the victims. It also hasn’t stopped speculation on how they started. Arson? Spontaneous combustion? Terrorism? We still don’t know and, given the way everything has a political slant to it, may not know anytime soon. The reason why these–and so many other wild fires California is famous for–have spread the way they have is no mystery. That’s the good news; the bad news is that the concepts that buttress them are so embedded in the conventional wisdom that dominates our political and social discourse.
Let’s start with a summary of the basis of the American environmental movement, from my 2022 piece Should My Students Be Here?:
- The world was a pristine, paradisaical wilderness before the arrival of humans. That’s especially pervasive in the U.S., where the presence of the Native Americans is blithely ignored to perpetuate this idea, to say nothing of catastrophic natural events.
- This leads to the next conclusion: humans are intruders on this earthly paradise. Their footprint needs to be reduced or eliminated to rectify this problem.
- There are too many humans and the number needs to be reduced, a concept I discuss in We’re Looking for a Volunteer, Ted. (To some extent this problem is solving itself with declining general fertility, but for Americans problems never solve themselves, they have to be eradicated through social campaigns and acts of Congress.)
- The suburbs take up too much space because of “urban sprawl” and need to be eliminated. Suburbs are additionally the generators of “phonies” which are the bane of a society which values authenticity. To replace these it is necessary to house our people differently, something I discuss in Barack Obama: Dreaming of the 50 Square Metre Apartment.
- Our solutions should be “natural” and “from the earth.” That’s why renewables are such an article of faith amongst our ruling class, never mind that there are solutions which practically eliminate the carbon output while providing the energy.
- The only way to get to these results is for everyone’s (well, almost everyone’s) living standards to seriously go in reverse or, put another way, back to poverty.
Given the existing population, a more sensible solution would be to manage the environment while making our development better meshed with it. That’s a “stewardship” concept which I discuss in my piece Messing In Our Own Box, but with the religious underpinnings of the environmental movement they had “…reverenced and worshiped created things more than the Creator…” (Romans 1:25 TCNT)
In spite of this, for a long time widespread brush clearing was widely practiced in California and elsewhere. Old brush is serious kindling for the kind of fires we’re seeing now, and fuels their rapid spread. Eventually the fanatics triumphed and this practice was curtailed. It was only a matter of time before wild fires became common, which they have.
Once we finally get these things under control–and other factors have made that difficult–the task of rebuilding will be made complicated by a system which prizes inaction over action, that intentionally. The hippie dreamers may have intended to score a major victory over another group of suburbanites. In this case they picked the wrong group, this being one of the most reliable left-wing groups of people in the country. How this train wreck will play itself out is hard to say, but my prayer is that it will be a reality check and that we can restore some sanity in our decision making process.
It won’t be easy. But being homeless–at any income level–isn’t either.
Positive Infinity 