DAVID MARCUS: In California, environmental activism is returning to a glittering inferno

There seems to be a two-word phrase that the environmental activists who set many of our federal and state policies around forestry don’t know. That phrase is “unintended consequences,” and more Los Angeles is burning this week, those consequences were deadly.

These professional officials are supposed to be saving the planet, not causing vast, populated areas to catch fire, and yet, incredibly, that seems to be exactly what led to the horror in California this week.

GOVERNMENT MISMANAGEMENT, NOT CLIMATE CHANGE, IS TO BLAME FOR CALIFORNIA’S DEVASTATING FIRES

For example, experts have warned for years that federal and state restrictions on controlled burning to mitigate wildfires are creating a pot, not only in California but also in Canada, as residents of the US Northeast who inhaled wildfire smoke learned last year.

Here’s how the former California representative Chuck DeVore says“The nature of the wildfire problem changes a little bit from the north to the south… In both cases, you have the problem of air quality management districts that are under federal and state mandates to clean up the air. That makes it difficult to have prescribed burns with the kind of frequency that has to happen to be able to reduce the fuel load.”

In other words, environmentalists overturned the view that smoke is harmful to the air and must therefore be stopped at all costs, made forests significantly more flammable and prepared the ground for thousands of homes and businesses to burn to the ground.

Likewise, the failure of the water supply in Los Angeles, which led to scenes of dried-up fire hydrants that looked like something out of the movie “Chinatown”, was the result of green utopianism.

Ninety-five percent of California’s water drains into the Pacific, which the last time I checked isn’t exactly dry. So why, you may ask, was this precious resource literally peed into the ocean? To protect fish, including the Delta Smelt, whose population was at on the verge of extinction for years.

No, I’m serious. Environmental regulations require the state to flush water into the sea after heavy snowfall, even as aqueducts and possibly fire trucks dry like dead leaves. It’s a policy that baffles the reasonable mind, but makes sense to environmentalists.

Much like we saw with hysterical COVID-19 activists, these fanatical environmental regulators lack the ability to grapple with legitimate competing interests. Once they decide to clean the air, they’ll clean it damn well, even if it means burning the forest, which has the opposite effect of cleaning the air.

It doesn’t matter if people become homeless and neighborhoods turn to ash, because environmentalists have their hearts in the right place and are seriously focused on big, important planetary threats, not a burning home or two.

These are the same people, mind you, who will blame the whole event, the fire, the wind, everything, on climate change. I’m surprised they didn’t use climate alarm to somehow explain why Mayor Karen Bass was in Ghana while her city was burning and refusing to answer questions about it.

The tragedy in California this week has its roots in decades of institutional capture of our universities and regulatory agencies by climate alarmists. The most absurd and sensational claims about climate change are met with sighs and promises of more money in our halls of power.

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That has to change. It is too kind to call environmental regulators myopic. Myopia at least offers a narrow range of vision. These people just seem blind, and after their predictions fail, year after year, decade after decade, they just keep making them.

It’s been seven years since Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez convinced us that the Earth only had 12 more years to tackle climate change. What? Are we down to five now?

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President-elect Donald Trump must ensure that everyone involved in his administration’s federal climate and environmental policy is able to understand the unintended consequences and legitimate competing interests.

California made a huge sacrifice on the altar of climate alarmism this week. Human lives and homes were destroyed in devotion to the almighty preservation of the environment. It backfired badly and unless we change course, it won’t be the last time this happens.

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