In essence, two main groups have emerged online and in the media regarding this political “blame game.” The first is primarily composed of Libertarian/right-leaning folks and their general consensus is that the blame for these fires falls promptly on Governor Newsom and the state bureaucracy as a whole. The second group, on the other hand, consists mainly of those on the left, and their belief is, essentially, that these fires are the result of climate change and our lackluster efforts to combat it.
Even though I normally try to be unbiased, when it comes to the facts surrounding the California forest fires, only one side's thesis even comes close to making sense. This is not the one I will be discussing though.
Put plainly, if there was ever a time to wake up California liberals to the folly of their beliefs, this is it. Therefore, instead of just repeating “our” argument, I would rather go through the left’s version of events in order to explain why they are wrong, and why they shouldn’t blindly buy what their blue politicians are telling them, with the hope that maybe a few of them will see it.
To begin, breaking down issues with the left’s solutions for climate change (electric cars, windmills, etc.) is important, but first let’s look at some national wildfire data to gain some initial perspective regarding this hot button topic.
According to the National Park Service, 85% of wildfires are caused by arson. In other words, if one is going to nominate climate change as the primary cause for these recent forest fires, well, statistically, they have an uphill battle. And this gets even truer when you take into account that within the remaining 15% of non-arson wildfires, there could still be any number of reasons other than climate change as to why they began. Oh yeah, and let’s not forget that at least two people have already been arrested in connection to these fires, thus making the case for climate change look even more flimsy.
But for the sake of argument, let’s assume that these fires aren’t arson. This still doesn’t get California's leadership off the hook, not by longshot. Let me explain.
According to the Insurance Information Institute, Texas leads the nation in number of wildfires and Alaska leads in acres burned; however, neither of these two states have even a fraction of the issues California has. Why, you ask? Perhaps it is because, in California, the reservoirs are empty in order to protect the habitat of a local fish, and because it takes 3.6.-7.2 years, yes, you heard that correctly, to get a controlled burn approved thanks to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)!
Yep, love it or hate it, when you look at the facts, you quickly begin to notice that, when it comes to the ways in which states prevent/fight wildfires, one of these things is not like the other… looking at you California. Of course, as unlikely as it is, statistically (because I know Democrats love to brag about being the party of science), maybe climate change is responsible for this recent bout of sunshine state infernos.
Pivoting to the battle against climate change, assuming this is in fact responsible, it appears California, and liberals as a whole, may still be missing the mark. This is to say that, as hard as it may be for environmentalists to hear, if we are assuming climate change is an existential, hurricane birthing, wildfire-causing crisis, the science simply doesn’t support the idea that green energy and electric cars, the go-to propositions by the anti-fossil fuel left for battling climate change, will actually solve the problem.
To elaborate, while I was researching for my first book, The Sane Citizens Political Handbook, I spent countless hours looking into the hard numbers associated with different forms of energy. I also looked heavily into how these forms of energy impact greenhouse gas emissions and the planet’s temperature as a whole. During this process, some of the things I found were not only fascinating, but also things that would end up exposing significant flaws with the environmentalist’s worldview that I hadn’t before noticed.
As I noted in the book: “It appears to me that the main issue with the federal government's attempts to regulate the environment is that, as with all things the federal government is involved in, there is a large degree of corruption, inefficiency, and overall impracticality inherent to their approaches. Take, as two examples, the current administration's plan to make half of all vehicles on the road electric by 2030 and the Environmental Protection Agencies’ (EPA) hatred of nuclear power plants. Now at face value these seem like good ideas, right? Well, the truth is that, regardless of how they may look on the surface, neither of these ideas actually are good. For one, when it comes to electric cars their batteries require rare earth metals, which require a lot of water to mine, and therefore their production contributes to a ton of soil contamination and/or water table pollution. Furthermore, the manufacturing process for these batteries also creates a lot of negative byproducts, not the least of which is carbon. How much carbon you ask? Well, there is some conflicting information on this so I won’t give hard numbers, but overall the consensus seems to be that manufacturing an electric car battery in a factory, which is over 1000 lbs. when it is finished, will release somewhere around as much carbon as a fossil fuel vehicle burns over the course of 8 years. So, in other words, a lot. At any rate, if you add all of that up and then factor in that the disposal of these batteries is a complete nightmare due to all of their toxicity, you quickly see that electric cars, technically, aren’t really all that green. In other words, they may seem like they make a huge impact on greenhouse gas emissions and the overall levels of pollution, but the reality is that they don’t.
“Moving on to nuclear, when it comes to the Environmental Protection Agencies' outright disdain for this type of energy, their anti-nuclear position doesn’t make much sense either, from an environmentalist standpoint that is. You see, we have all been taught to be deathly afraid of nuclear energy because, I mean, who wants another Chernobyl, right? Well, put plainly the reality is that well-regulated nuclear plants are one of if not the cleanest and safest forms of energy that we have; and, just as a bonus, they are also far more efficient than your average green energy source. So much more so, in fact, that it actually takes 300 square miles of renewable energy sources (windmills and solar panels) to make the same amount of energy that only 1 square mile of nuclear plant makes, and the nuclear plant, I might add, does all of this without needing any of the rare earth metals that windmills and solar panels rely on. But more than all of that, 90% of all of our goods here in the US are transported by ship during at least some point in their life, and these vessels account for around 3% of our overall C02 emissions. Well, I don’t know about you, but from my point of view it seems like an easy solution for these emissions would be to simply convert these ships into vessels that, instead of diesel, run on clean and efficient nuclear energy, which is something many ships already run on, and quite successfully I might add. Anyway, all of this is to say that, put frankly, many of the government's current environmental efforts do not actually remedy the problems that environmentalism seeks to solve. Rather, it seems like they are more often than not an exercise in futility that is plagued and/or driven by political theatre and governmental corruption/incompetence.
“Sidenote: The biggest causes of carbon emissions around the world are:
Electricity & Heat (25%)
Agriculture, Forestry & other land use (24%)
Industry (21%)
Transportation (14%)
Other energy (10%
Buildings (6%)”
So, electric cars are clearly not the climate change kryptonite we have all been told they are, but what about the rest of the green energy sector? Well, as the science shows, most of these sectors, if not all, would be far cleaner and more efficient if the goal was to incorporate nuclear energy into them instead of electric/renewable energy sources because this would decrease fossil fuel emissions, and subsequently greenhouse gas emissions, while also giving us reliable and predictable energy. This also applies to the second item on the quoted list above (Agriculture, Forestry & other land use) in that nuclear would have a much smaller impact (1/300th) on the land environment than renewable energy sources (solar panels and windmills) would, thus decreasing carbon emissions from that source (currently 24%) to nearly zero. Too bad the EPA and the left seem to hate it, am I right?
The wildfires in California are a horrible tragedy and my heart sincerely breaks for the people affected by them, but if we are to successfully prevent these blazes from rearing their ugly heads in the future, it is important to speak about them honestly. To that end, the most likely cause of these West Coast infernos is arson. Arson, I might add, that had its deadliness compounded immensely by a statewide failure to make controlled, preemptive burns in a timely manner; something that both Texas and Alaska do, which is likely why their fires, though larger and more robust, are much more easily contained.
If arson is not responsible, though, this does not necessarily mean that climate change is at fault, but even assuming it is, for the sake of argument, the data is very clear in highlighting that the left’s mainstream tactics for fighting climate change (electric cars/green energy) are, well, not all that great or green. In fact, they may actually be making the problem worse.
Anyway, you can make your own hypotheses based off of this information, but as for me, well, I am just going to keep following “the science.”
