Conservation Only Makes Wildfires Worse
California's politicians must stop lying about climate change and start fighting fire with fire
With the sky an apocalyptic orange, 24 hours without daylight, and the air quality index at an appalling 191, San Francisco Mayor London Breed and California governor Gavin Newsom took to Twitter to grandstand about climate change.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The hots are getting hotter. The wets are getting wetter.<br><br>Climate change isn’t something that is going to happen in the future. It’s happening right NOW. <a href="https://t.co/3pBG8b828p">https://t.co/3pBG8b828p</a></p>— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) <a href="https://twitter.com/GavinNewsom/status/1304848763412869120?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 12, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Soon media outlets like Huffpo and the New York Times followed suit, claiming that the major reason huge swathes of the nation are currently aflame is due to rising temperatures turning the forests of America’s West Coast into a giant tinder box.
It’s a simple narrative that’s easy to understand, but it’s more political opportunism than ecological fact.
First, let me just say that I believe climate change is happening. My family and I recycle, compost, drive electric when we can’t walk or bike, and generally agree that cutting back on energy consumption where we can is a good thing. Humans are a part of nature, and as such need to find ways to coexist peacefully with it. So it’s especially gross to see our leaders twist a national emergency into an ideological stump speech.
If there really is nothing that we can do to counter these raging forest fires other than sacrifice so as to cut back on our carbon footprints, then why aren’t countries with equally dry forests, high emissions, and hot temperatures facing the same problems? Why isn’t South Africa a fiery inferno that grows bigger every summer? How is Australia not one big raging brush fire?
The answer lies in human wisdom.
Where nature provides abundance, humans naturally settle. Whether that be a lush river delta with fertile soil or dense woodlands with sunshine year-round. Over time, our dependence on said land makes us wish it will never change, not realizing that change is inevitable and our attempts at stasis will only bring about a far more terrible future. We build dams to keep the water from flowing away, creating stagnant pools of disease, and sowing the seeds for massive floods should the dam break. We snuff out all the little fires, do nothing about the dead trees, and let byzantine laws preventing controlled burns pile up like so much kindling.
Humans of the past learned to work with the laws of nature and didn’t give up at the first disaster. Instead of resuming nomadic lives, they irrigated the waters. Instead of snuffing out all fires, they burned dangerously dry vegetation ahead of time. Presumably, not everyone agreed. At least one priest must have cried foul at these practices, declaring that the real answer to fires and floods were more sacrifices. But you likely don’t hear about them anymore because nature took care of their idiocy.
Thankfully, we still have people who remember how to work with nature rather than cower in abject terror. The Karuk Tribe in Orleans, California, hosts workshops throughout the year where they burn about 14,000 acres nationwide annually. They have been managing the land upon which their ancestors thrived for millennia. They know that the But the tribe continues to face fire bans from policymakers, energy providers, and landowners who want to limit any liability resulting from fires in their vicinity. And governor Newsom, who has invoked climate change as a means of shifting the blame onto regular folks while ignoring how his government blocks tribes like the Karuk from performing their historical role in the region.
If this is a misguided attempt to get Californians to reconsider the validity of climate change, it can only have the opposite effect when citizens realize they’ve been lied to, but I suspect the real reason for shifting blame is far more cowardly and worse than mere ignorance. Newsom simply doesn’t want to acknowledge his and the government’s role in all this. Over five decades of inadequate action and negligence is simply criminal. Priestly robes look better than orange jumpsuits.
Responsibility towards our environment extends beyond dropping packaging in the blue bin and not leaving the tap on. It means recognizing our impact on our immediate surroundings and doing our part to maintain the balance that existed before we got here.
The Taoists believe in effecting change through doing as little as possible. Working within nature rather than seeing one as an outside force imposing one’s will. But even they understand that there are times when one must act. Because the difference between a small flame and fire so ravaging it blots out the sky, is a matter of inaction.
For more on practices that will actually help prevent future wildfires across the West Coast, check out these two articles from Mother Jones and Ars Technica.