Thursday, September 10, 2020

Obama, always the dishonest activist



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Sorry @barackobama but it's NOT climate change—California's ineffective “green” policies are to blame for the state's blackouts and fires. Joel Kotkin explains: Every summer, usually around this time of year, California gets inevitable heat waves. In the past we used to endure them without fearing our power would be shut down and our houses left in ruins. No more. Almost every year we do not just have a fire season, we have a conflagration. Millions of acres get scorched across the state, accompanied by mass evacuations. Meanwhile, electricity is cut off to millions more, and the state, already reeling from an extraordinary economic decline, with the sixth-highest unemployment rate among the states, continues its pell-mell rush into the 12th Century. As an old newspaper and TV reporter, I covered fires for many years and, in producing documentaries on past California disasters, secured historic footage of devastating fires as late as the 1960s. Yet what has changed is how we respond to natural disasters, often in ways that make them worse. This is clear with the fires. California’s two last governors, Jerry Brown and now Gavin Newsom, conveniently blame “global warming” for the massive destruction. But even granting that summer the temperatures have crept up, one would think this would lead to improved management of forests and brush—after all, it is science. But the green allies have long stood against the harvesting of dead trees and the aggressive clearing of bush and attempts to do so in 2016 were vetoed by Brown. Money that could have gone for undergrounding electrical lines went instead to green energy schemes. Overall, the state Legislative Analyst Office found, the fires were less driven by global warming, but by purposeful policies that allowed for the accumulation of fuel, as well a growing development in certain exurban areas, in part as a way to escape the extremely high housing prices along the coast. Last year’s fires cost the state economy $2 billion; we may surpass it this year. These fires are not great for the environment or for reaching the state’s super-ambitious greenhouse gas goals...

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