Insanity: Doing The Same Thing Over And Over And Expecting A Different Result

Fire is a fact of life in many parts of America, and wildfires were common long before Man arrived. And as much as I like a chunk of prime beef grilled on a roaring fire, most of the time fires that are not confined to grills and fire rings at camp sites are a very bad thing. And...spare me the glories of nature argument; smallpox and dysentery and floods and malaria are also the glories of nature, and I don't see us protecting them (well, Rachel Carson did!).

Not managing undergrowth and systematically trimming trees around power lines is functionally identical to protecting the Anopheles mosquito from the depredations of man.

California tried respecting Mother Nature by restricting the cutting and clearing and trimming of...pretty much everything...and it didn't work. Mother Nature bit California in the ass, over and over and over. Fires that could have been small and manageable became conflagrations because of the huge amount of fuel available to them. But this didn't teach them a damned thing.

Instead of reexamining their fire policy, California, in its infinite wisdom, decided to blame the hapless power company that was forced by state policy to accept the status quo, and the predictable result is the only action available to them...cutting power to eliminate that possible source of ignition. But there are other sources...ones that cannot be easily controlled: lightning and automobiles and arsonists and camp fires and a host of other ways that fires start. Because let us look at the history of California before Man arrived! There were plenty of fires back then.

Now California is in uncharted territory, in which hundreds of thousands of its citizens are purposefully cut off from the benefits of modern civilization for hours or days until the risk of fire subsides. That is frankly insane. There are tried-and-true methods to control and minimize wildfires, and it is time for California to admit defeat and try the old ways. Will they stop fires completely? No, of course not. Nothing will, but minimizing the risks is a rational way of dealing with the problem.

But...California isn't rational. They are nuts. They will gleefully continue their arrogant slide into 3rd World status rather than admitting that Gaia is a stone-cold bitch, and needs to be dealt with forcefully.

posted by CBD at 02:45 PM

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