The Delicate Balance Of California.

Great Debates
1

So California has been in the news a lot lately. But I want to focus on these horrendous fires that are currently happening.

I’ve always seen California as a delicate balance between decadence and preservation. Those two terms clash more than they agree. These fires seem to have pushed that disagreement to a climax.

On the one hand, you have these multi million dollar homes, which would be just as expensive anywhere else in the country, burning into piles of ash - 2500 at last count, total. More than one insurance company is going to go out of business, most certainly. 2500 homes, as reported on NPR this afternoon, will easily push this catastrophe into the tens of billions of dollars worth of damage. I don’t remember a hurricane doing this much damage, and it isn’t yet over. At least the human toll has so far been relatively low.

On the other hand, you have the environmentalists who blocked legislation to clean out these forests of the dead and dying trees, and the underbrush that acts as catalysts to this type of catastrophe. Not that clearing out the forests would have prevented this from happening at all, since weather seems to be playing a major role in this disaster. From what I have seen so far, the fires seem to be benefitting from a series of coincidental circumstances.

I have two subjects for this debate.

  1. What are the extreme environmental groups, such as ELF, thinking right now? All of these developments and country clubs are going up in flames, but so are their forests. Certainly they realize that the developments will be rebuilt quicker than the forests can regenerate. The wildlife alone that has been killed is probably staggering.

  2. What is the litmus test from the rest of (more northern) California? Is there a certain sense of comeuppance? Did these decadent and fortunate Californians deserve this?

Me? I just feel sorry for a state that has yet found the bottom, simply digging deeper.

2

The wierd thing is that these houses are being destroyed because of the proximity to “nature”. The same proximity that endangers wildlife.

Fires are part of the natural cycle... but from what I understand the overcontrol of fires in the past means that the forests have way to much fuel lying around to get burned... so instead of 3+ minor fires... you get a major fire.

ELF probably will just blame development... lets wait and see.
3

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-sandiego31oct31002435,1,2468626.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage

Don’t be so quick to blame enviromentalists. This disaster could not have happened without poor decision making by the Bushies in FEMA, as well the hysterically anti-government and tax phobic attitudes of So Cal suburbanites.

Too many well-off people wanted to get by on the cheap. There was a frank refusal to pay for the level of government services that were actually neccessary, and a misallocaton of resources that were available into prisons and police.

4

The California disaster is the direct result of the government’s doing what the government doesn’t have the sense to do: manage people’s lives or their environment.

You can be sure that no sustained series of “natural” disasters could ever befall Ted Turner. No private individual, no matter how vast or tiny his land holdings, would ever run things so stupidly as do the people of California. It isn’t that Californians are any stupider than the rest of us, but that they are trying to control human behavior and land use through the political system. They are entrusting management of a complex environment to a government too incompetent to teach a kid simple math. What are they thinking?

Clearly all national forests and parks, as well as most of California, should be privatized in order to minimize such future misery, as Ronald Coase pointed out in the work that won him the Nobel Prize. It’s a wonderful thing that some insurance companies will go broke. Californians will have no incentive to stop putting wooden houses among the pine cones as long as they can get insurance and part of their losses met by FEMA’s spending other people’s money. Insurance offers nothing but moral hazard.

5

The fires are a scourge from god for electing Ahnuld. Totally deserved.

6

The magic words of the commercials for years have been “create a defensible space”, asking for homeowners to keep brush and tall grass cut back for at least 30 feet around a home. Of course many people don’t want to do this because its sooo pretty to have the trees overhanginging the house, and the shake roof helps soften the look of our home in this pastoral location :smack:.

A hefty portion of these homes probably would not have burned if this was done consistently. Don’t even get me started on the people with garden hoses.

7

We also like to build houses which overhang coastal cliffs. And on faultlines.
Eat your flyover hearts out, folks. :wink: And keep that free money coming.
Well, except those of you who build on The Outer Banks. You’re pretty cool too.
Peace,
mangeorge

8

This exact same thing happened during the Canberra Bushfires last year. “City greenies” adamantly blocked any attempts to clear underbrush due to the misguided belief that it was destroying nature. On top of that, the trend towards living more in touch na dcloser to nature meant that more people were both in danger and had not adequate protection. The efficiency of previous firesaving efforts meant that even more underbrush got depositied without being burnt and people had a false sense of security.

All this culminated finally into one big fire that burned so hot that it was uncontainable and also killed many of the trees due to the heat. Australian trees are adapted to regular fires and depend on them to sprout. However, if the fire gets too hot, then they die and entire swathes of bush are now effectively dead.

9

This exact same thing happened during the Canberra Bushfires last year. “City greenies” adamantly blocked any attempts to clear underbrush due to the misguided belief that it was destroying nature. On top of that, the trend towards living more in touch na dcloser to nature meant that more people were both in danger and had not adequate protection. The efficiency of previous firesaving efforts meant that even more underbrush got depositied without being burnt and people had a false sense of security.

All this culminated finally into one big fire that burned so hot that it was uncontainable and also killed many of the trees due to the heat. Australian trees are adapted to regular fires and depend on them to sprout. However, if the fire gets too hot, then they die and entire swathes of bush are now effectively dead.

10

Clearing underbrush is at least hampering nature, as you point out in your second paragraph.

11

The main problem is this: the real work that needs to be done has no direct economic profit. It’s clearing away virtually valueless shrubbery, duff, and smaller dead trees: the stuff that really allows fires to spread so rapidly accross areas where there aren’t even many trees.

So, in general, the government tends to shy away from contracting people to do this. It’s expensive, and if it works… well nothing happens. Which is great, but “nothing happened!” isn’t exactly big news or a winning platform.

If the government does do it, it often tries to pay for it by giving logging rights to the areas in question. However, what the loggers want (big, old growth non-rotted trees) are rarely what needs to be cleared for fire prevention, and indeed cutting down the prime logging trees often makes the situation worse in the end, because big trees tend to dampen the growth of the shrubs and smaller trees which can be especially dangerous (they allow fires to move much much faster through an area).

So it’s not exactly a great situation. You have anti-logging people fighting the loggers, who in turn are really only an indirect solution to the problem in the first place (they are the most equipped to clear brush because they are there, have the tools, and often have the economic incentives).

Privitazation of the huge tracts of federal land would definately help… or would it? After all, the big tragedy here is that private homes got fried… for reasons already stated in this thread. So, it’s a big mess. There is no real perfect fix-all, other than simply paving the state in blacktop.

Of course, in California last year, the beetles made things real bad. It was obvious that things were going to be much more dangerous (prompting Davis to ask for more federal money), and arguably, Congress really should have allocated more money to clearing brush and making more breaks if it wanted to prevent things like this.

12

I heard that the feds gave California $30 million to clear out the dead trees and brush, but that California never got around to spending it. (But I don’t know when we got the money, so there mighn’t have been time.)

13

I thought it was more like 40 million, and it wasn’t enough. Dunno about them not spending it though.

14

Maybe I’ve been mentally poisoned because I’ve actually studied real-world ecology, but low-intensity burns and thinning are PART OF “nature”. It’s letting undergrowth build up indefinitely that is unnatural.

15

Dogface, that’s true. Forest fires are a necessary part of nature recycling itself. It’s when you introduce artificial factors like real estate value, and the possibility that one of these fires was started by a flare gun, that a fire is seen as “evil,” and has negative consequences attached to it.

So what’s the scoop from ELF? I swear I would have heard something on the news about them.

16

Well, I heard an interesting observation last week, listening to the local fire coverage on AM radio:

The residential areas that got burned and saw a lot of lost homes were predominantly conservative communities that tend to vote against environmental issues, especially when they conflict with business or development interests.

In other words, Ahnuld voters.

So Evil Captor only thought he was trolling.

17

Putting out “quiet” fires, instead of protecting property by taking precautions as mentioned above (30ft zone, etc), is letting undergrowth build unnaturally.
Nature does have a cycle. Forests tend to develop cycles according to the type of controls available. Sometimes that cycle doesn’t seem to be in our best interest.
People build in forests. Others build on cliffs, or flood plains. I live on a fault line. Those really silly folks :wink: choose to live on the Outer Banks, awaiting the next big blow. We all take our chances, I think.
Sure, privatize every freakin’ thing. Blame it on nature.
Are we talking about the same thing here, Dogface?. :stuck_out_tongue:

18

Ha! Gotcha! I had no idea what I was doing!