DAVID MARCUS: In California, environmental activism backfires into a blazing hellscape

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The wildfires in California were 'completely preventable,' says Michael Shellenberger

Public News founder Michael Shellenberger questions why the California National Guard wasn't mobilized earlier as wildfires ravaged the state on 'Hannity.'

There is a two-word phrase that the environmental activists who set many of our federal and state policies around forestry do not seem to know. That phrase is "unintended consequences," and as much of Los Angeles burns this week, those consequences have been deadly. 

These expert officials are supposed to be saving the planet, not making wide, populated swaths of it catch fire, and yet, incredibly, it looks like that is exactly what led to the horrors in California this week.

GOVERNMENT MISMANAGEMENT, NOT CLIMATE CHANGE, IS TO BLAME FOR CALIFORNIA'S DESTRUCTIVE WILDFIRES

For example, experts have warned for years that federal and state restrictions on controlled burns to mitigate fires are creating a tinderbox, not just in California, but in Canada, as residents of the Northeast U.S. who sucked down wildfire smoke last year learned.

Here is how former California Assemblyman Chuck DeVore puts it, "The nature of the wildfire problem changes a little bit from north to south… In both cases, you have the issue of air quality management districts that are under both federal and state mandate to clean up the air. That makes it difficult to have prescribed burns with the sort of frequency that needs to happen to be able to reduce the fuel load."

Tanner Charles Schaaf shared photos of the home he ran from with his friend during the California wildfires. (Tanner Charles Schaaf)

In other words, the environmentalist blinkered attitude that smoke is bad for the air, and hence must be stopped at all costs, made the forests vastly more combustible and set the stage 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 fire hydrants running dry that looked like they could have been out of the movie "Chinatown," are the result of green utopianism.

Ninety-five percent of California’s water flows into the Pacific, which the last time I checked, isn’t exactly running out of water itself. So why, you may ask, is this precious resource literally pissed away into the ocean? To protect fish, including the Delta Smelt, the population of which has been on the brink of extinction for years. 

Beach front properties are left destroyed by the Palisades Fire, in this aerial view, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025 in Malibu, Calif. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill) (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

No, I’m serious. Environmental regulations require the state to flush water into the sea after major snowfalls, even while aqueducts and eventually fire trucks grow dry as dead leaves. It is a policy that baffles the sensible mind, but makes sense to environmentalists.

Much like we saw with hysterical COVID activists, these fanatical environmental regulators have no ability to grapple with legitimate competing interests. Once they decide to clean the air, they will damn well clean the air, even if it means burning down the forest, which has the opposite effect of cleaning the air.

It doesn’t matter if people go homeless and neighborhoods turn to cinders, because the environmentalists have their heart in the right place, and are earnestly focused on big, important planetary threats, not a home or two on fire.

These are the same people, mind you, who will blame the entire event, the fire, the wind, everything, on climate change. I'm surprised they haven’t used climate alarmism to somehow explain why Mayor Karen Bass was in Ghana while her city burned and refuses to answer questions about it.

The tragedy in California this week has its roots in decades of institutional capture in our universities and regulatory agencies by climate alarmists. The most absurd and sensational claims about climate change are met with gasps 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. At least myopia offers a narrow range of vision. These people just seem blind, and after their predictions fail to come to fruition, year after year, decade after decade, they just keep making them.

It has been seven years since Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez assured us the earth only had 12 years left to address the climate. What? Are we down to five now?

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Incoming President Donald Trump needs to ensure that everyone involved in the federal climate and environmental policies of his administration is capable of understanding unintended consequences and legitimate competing interests. 

California has made a huge sacrifice at the altar of climate alarmism this week. People’s lives and homes were destroyed in fealty to the all-powerful preservation of the environment. It backfired badly, and if we don’t change course, it will not be the last time this happens. 

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