Raging Infernos

By Dr. A. H. Krieg

The disastrous California fires of 2018 and 2019 are reflexively blamed on Pacific Gas & Electric, the state’s largest utility. As a public utility, the heavily-regulated PG&E has become a convenient scapegoat for the profound failings of California’s elected officials in Sacramento.
Uncontrollable fires in California are a natural phenomenon. There have always been fires, but they were usually contained and rarely became a danger to homes or entire communities.

Obviously, something changed: It was the radicalism and idiocy of the powerful “environmentalist” movement and their absurd demands. No doubt about it, the extensive nature of these recent fires is due to California environmental legislation and regulations promoted by the wacko environmentalist lobby.

Prior to 1990, county fire departments across California routinely cut fire-breaks every few miles through heavily forested areas. These were a safeguard that effectively permitted fires driven by the Santa Ana winds to be “contained” and usually made manageable.

In 1992, however, self-styled environmentalists discovered the Kangaroo Rat, which they declared an endangered species. They then claimed that fire-breaks interfered with the natural habitat of these supposedly “endangered” rats. This resulted in regulatory and legislative initiatives that prohibited county fire departments from cutting fire-breaks.

Then in 2016 these same idiots enacted laws (California Forest Practice Regulations, Title 14, California Code of Regulations,) that prevented anyone from removing dead trees from forested areas. By enacting these laws, they created a statewide tinderbox.

The disastrous fires that have destroyed much of California in 2018 and 2019 are the handiwork of wacko environmentalists and their gutless enablers in the state legislature. This “unholy alliance” has protected neither man, nor beast, nor woodlands, nor property, and they have helped destroy hundreds of millions of trees.

So, President Trump is correct: Leftist “environmentalists” have helped destroy hundreds of human beings, an estimated 200 million trees and the flora and fauna those trees once sheltered, including the Kangaroo Rat, itself.

Once again, the hapless left has visited profound damage on the very objects of its misplaced “compassion.”