Dear Editor,
The part that saddens me the most about the fires is that this is not the end. These fires will keep decimating communities until we get to the root of the issue: climate change.
We have grown so used to reactionary solutions that no real preventative measures are being taken. Why aren’t we talking about a Green New Deal? Why aren’t we converting to renewable energy? Why aren’t we addressing the biggest culprit of climate change, the agricultural industry, and significantly reducing our beef consumption?
I don’t want to see my state burn every year, but if we don’t address climate change head on, these apocalyptic fires will remain our reality.
Sincerely,
SANA SETHI
San Jose, CA
Environmentalism and reducing carbon emissions are worthwhile goals and I support them in principle. Unfortunately, almost all environmentalist politicians also support illegal immigration, “social justice”, paying people not to work, eliminating the idea of personal responsibility, brainwashing our kids in public schools, dividing us by race and gender, etc.
So as a citizen, voting green means voting Democrat and there’s just too much downside in doing that.
> Why aren’t we addressing the biggest culprit of climate change, the agricultural industry, and significantly reducing our beef consumption?
I’m glad you brought that up.
From Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture
“The development of agriculture enabled the human population to grow many times larger than could be sustained by hunting and gathering. Agriculture began independently in different parts of the globe, and included a diverse range of taxa, in at least 11 separate centres of origin. Wild grains were collected and eaten from at least 105,000 years ago. From around 11,500 years ago, the eight Neolithic founder crops, emmer and einkorn wheat, hulled barley, peas, lentils, bitter vetch, chick peas and flax were cultivated in the Levant. Rice was domesticated in China between 11,500 and 6,200 BC with the earliest known cultivation from 5,700 BC.”
According to scientists, the population of the planet after the end of the last ice age, about 14,000 years ago. was 15 to 25 million people. Today the population of the planet is about seven and a half BILLION people.
Agriculture is responsible for the capacity of the planet to support 99.7 percent of the humans who are alive today.
If humanity decided to discontinue and abolish agriculture, humans would have survive as hunter gatherers as they did 11,500 years ago.
If seven billion people all tried to become hunter gathers, all of the elephants, whales, and spotted owls would quickly be eaten. And then, many billions of people would starve to death.
Personally, I’m for saving the elephants, whales, and spotted owls, and I’m against billions of people starving to death.
So, regretfully, I will not be joining your campaign to do away with agriculture.
Man made climate change is a bigger hoax than the Pandemic, which is really saying something.
this is like wack-a-mole
cut/paste is the only scalable solution
This is not what climate change looks like.
This is what California has always looked like.
If you want 40M people to live here, and welcome everyone from all over the planet, you’ve got to manage the forest.
Let the forests grow like no one lived here, the fires will get worse, reverting back to pre-western development
“A paper in Forest Ecology and Management estimates that in prehistoric California, an area of land equal to 88% of burned land in a decade burned in a single year. This means that before 1800, 1.8 million hectares of land burning in California was a normal year. “ (1.8M hectares = 4.44M acres)
“In 1910 there was a great fire in ID, WA, and OR that burned 3M acres.”
what was the carbon ppm before 1800? in 1910?
Even prog site wikipedia acknowledges the massive impact large fires have on evolution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_ecology
But I guess its just easier to burp out, “this is what climate change looks like”
Yes!!! This is what we should be talking about— if voting democratic is what’s stopping you from saving the Earth you live on, then you need to re-evaluate your priorities. Thank you for writing this!
Gupta, you are welcome!
Big Basin Park burned more than 100 years ago. I don’t think that will happen again in our lifetimes. Areas that haven’t burned might yet. The SCU Lightning Complex hasn’t burned the area of the Lexington fire in 1985. The CZU Lightning Complex hasn’t burned the area of the Martin fire in 2009.
Santa Sethi, I can accept that climate change played a role in the recent mega fires in CA. Can you accept that derelict forest management also played a role? There is nothing anyone can do to prevent numerous spot fires from starting when there are 11,000 lightning strikes in two days. Proper forest management can stop those dozens of spot fires from becoming mega fires.