Leftist Governance Caused The Worst Fires In Memory?

 “This is California’s big secret: it’s not climate change that’s burning up the forests, killing people, and destroying hundreds of homes; it’s decades of environmental mismanagement that has created a tinderbox of unharvested timber, dead trees, and thick underbrush.” 

As Scott Dittrich, the Malibu Public Works Commissioner acknowledged in The Wall Street Journal, “attributing the recent fires to climate change is disingenuous. The climate doesn’t shift so measurably in 10 or 20 years….”

Opinion | A Malibu Official on the California Wildfires For years, some of us have fought for putting utility equipment underground.

In fact, the climate history of the greater Los Angeles area reveals that “Annual wildfires fanned by Santa Ana winds are nothing new in Southern California,” according to Rep. Tom McClintock in the WSJ opinion article, “Bad Policy Served as Kindling for California’s Wildfires."

Opinion | Bad Policy Served as Kindling for California’s Wildfires Tom McClintock Bad forest and water management, misplaced priorities and price controls all played a role.

“Prior to 1800, California lost an average of around 4.5 million acres to fires every year. As we introduced scientific land-management and fire-suppression measures, by the end of the 20th century that average dropped to around 250,000 acres.” 

By 2020, as a result of California’s “recent extreme environmental and social policies” the state lost 4.3 million acres to wildfires.

In fact, California had so mismanaged its forests and water resources that in 2018, in the midst of the terrible 2018 wildfires, DeVore in Forbes declared that “There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor.” CP.