Et tu, Steve? Need someone to blame for a natural disaster? How about sustained 70+ mile per hour winds? How about no rain for months? Ever try to douse a backyard bbq in the wind? Multiply that a million-fold and you’ve got just one of the LA fires. There are many things that could have been done to prevent or, at least, minimize the damage. But the most obvious one was ignored, because millions want to live in an area that was once a desert and is prone to landslides and earthquakes. Enough with the finger pointing. At least wait until the fires are out and the danger subsides.
Thank you for your comment. I have a year’s subscription and I’ve also become tired of the finger pointing in Steve’s daily essays. I’ve commented a few times that people don’t need to be reminded about what’s wrong with America or the world. He’s preaching to the mostly converted, but I for one am tired of the finger pointing. I belong to other Substacks where the authors are seeking ways to stay relevant during these difficult times. They all project a sense of calm and introspection. Alas, Steve has become more negative all the while complaining about how difficult it is to grow his readership. I have a suggestion: become more positive in your outlook and stop pointing fingers at what you consider inept people. You already have one who in 9 days will be sitting in the highest office of your land. No need for more than one.
I agree with your viewpoint and I also regret subscribing to Steve's Substack. He has become increasingly negative ever since Trump won reelection and his column is not helpful if we are to endure the next 4 years. Something has to change. I'm almost ready to cancel my subscription but since it's paid for I keep hoping Steve changes his column. I feel worse after I listen to him but stronger when I listen to other Substack columnist as they give me something to think about. I hope Steve's not blindsided as his readership declines. For right now I'll listen to him with the thought I will not renew.
I appreciate you sharing your comment. As a Canadian I pay $100 per year to read Steve. This is a lot of money to spend on essays that foment anger and finger pointing and frankly I’m reaching my limit of tolerance. As you said something happened after Trump won.
I canceled my subscription a couple of weeks back because of Steve’s incessant Biden-bashing. He does have a tendency to lash out when situations are complex. However, I can’t help but read his Substack and watch his YouTubes, at least until my subscription expires!
Me too. But if his writing continues to anger me rather than inspire I'll immediately cancel my subscription. If he can inform me on today's politics I'll listen until the end. When he starts bashing elected officials that I believe in such as President Biden I tune him out. There are many more journalists on Substack who inspire me. There's not enough time in my day to listen to negative/mediocre ones.
Cam from canuckia, agreed. It is easy to find and assess blame in ANYTHING found negative. I am sure I could delve into negative territory given a disaster of biblical proportions. Steve did his much too often negative slam and insured his readers suffer. We, well, I do not have time for this deep dive into political landscaping. Currently I am figuring out how to best donate time, money and efforts to assist people affected in California. Politics be damned. They are always, you guessed it, POLITICS.
CAM from CA. When and where has Steve complained about difficulty growing his readership? That's weird! He's never done that. You are making shit up, just like MAGA.
THIS IS THE PARAGRAPH THAT’S APPENDED AT THE BOTTOM OF THE EMAILS THAT I RECEIVE FROM THE WARNING.
It is extremely difficult to grow The Warning’s subscriber base through social media platforms. As a result, the only way that we can continue to build The Warning’s subscriber base is through word-of-mouth. If you appreciate the fearless, independent content that our team produces, we would be grateful if you would share The Warning with your family and friends.
The other social media platforms don't allow "controversial" musings like Steve's. His writings are flagged and eliminated from those platforms. Basically, he is censored. He doesn't have "difficulty" growing his subscriber base because of his "finger pointing" etc or that he is a shitting commentator, as you have implied. Why don't you just get your $$ back and beat foot out of here if you don't like it.
The only one making stuff up here is you. For your edification, there is no refund on Substacks - zero, zilch. So once again, before you vomit idiocies, please read and become informed.
Yeah, I'm thinking what about all the republicans denying climate change and vetoing any step to help slow it down? We're getting more fires and hurricanes due to the fact our planet is dying and the billionaires and Republicans who serve them don't care. The whole planet is either on fire or drowning but as long as their mindset is "Well I got mine, screw everyone else" it'll only get worse. For everyone. Unless these billionaires with the help of elon muck find a way to build a space station, like the one in Elysium, where they can all go to live in serenity and comfort. We will be left behind to burn or drown in the mess they enabled if not created. Mic drop.
Had I written a response, this would have been it. How many pictures have I seen with firefighters hosing down an inferno? A lot. It was the weather and the wind. And then the picture of at least 7-8 firemen standing in front of a house and watching it burn. Let the independent investigation go forward, if the fires ever stop…
Uh, maybe suburban sprawl is an issue. L.A. County is mostly desert. See Polanski’s “Chinatown.” I agree municipal politics is where it happens—but when was the last rain in L.A.? May? Big Ag takes a lot of water to grow pistachios, pomegranates, almonds, etc., in the San Joaquin Valley and they bitch about not getting water. This is far more complex an issue that will not be solved by finger-wagging. Hold accountable, yes. But have you driven I-5 out of the Grapevine, more and more subdivisions after a mountain top has been flattened. Freeways constantly widened. Insane build out. But then again what municipal departments are in charge of 100 mph winds, Santa Ana’s on steroids. Take a breath, Steve, read something by the late Mike Davis, “City of Quartz” or “Ecology of Fear.” But then he was a leftie. Prefer literature? T.C. Boyle’s “Tortilla Curtain,” which mixes immigration, encroachment on wildlife’s habitat, and wildfires. It was going to happen. Yes, I hope people are held accountable, especially the People and their complacency.
Excellent critical thinking and literary-resource-citing here, Michael. Love the Chinatown reference. Steve is doing some purple provoking here with his punchy alliteration and thinking that firing or voting out people is going to profoundly change anything. Finger pointing for affect already, and Steve is jumping right into it.
People wanted to live in homes up in the chaparral brush with views, developers built. Nobody except truly smart ecologists and climate change experts were saying No, don't do that, and nobody in city or county planning was saying Okay we have to clear all the chaparral down to the ground and build huge fire breaks in anticipation of ordinary wildfires, let along hurricane fires. And the greed-centric developers and bankers and real estate people and anybody else who could make a buck off the mountain vista developments and near suburb build out would fight that to the death. And definitely the empty reservoir for repairs in the Palisades is a token of absolute hubris and dereliction in the face of Nature, and we don't know the story on that yet, but why put up a token reservoir if you're building up in all the chaparral with Santa Ana winds growing more intense over the past 15 years? It's greed and stupidity writ large and hubris that is one of humankind's deepest flaws. Let's say a climate-change savvy, prescient mayor of LA said we need to clear all the chaparral around all the mountain/canyon developments flowing down into LA, and need enormous fire breaks built, and let's hire a CCC-Roosevelt like corp of undocumented immigrants and pay them a living wage of $20 an hour to do all that clearing and keep it cleared. Would he or she be elected? Very improbable. And she or he would be fiercely opposed by the greed-quislings represented by Trump and Musk and Ramaswamy and Zuckerburg, and all the ones (democrats or republicans) wanting more money, and all the pseudo intellectual fascist enablers surrounding Trump and all the people who voted for Trump and his enablers/collaborators either in a permanent condition of stupidity, or because they did not bother to think things through even a tiny tiny little bit and with a tiny tiny amount of altruism or empathy for others and for other species. And I really worry for all the pets and farm animals as well as for fellow humans this greed/hubris/enjoy-the-view-desire brought upon us.
You are absolutely right that it is really absolute insanity to continue to allow more & more encroachments of human habitation up steep mountainsides in the middle of a dry brush desert.
You are also correct that if a person ran for political office on a platform of limiting that, or forcing it to be developed in the maximally environmentally sane way, that person would never win…except maybe, just maybe, following this enormous disaster.
The human species, & especially most Americans, just can’t seem to grasp the concept of delayed gratification or cutting back their wants for the good of the community, the nation, or the planet as a whole. Trying to get folks to even give up maybe half of the meat that they eat, not all, just half, is just about impossible. The minute you mention that if we would just cut back on our meat consumption it would save so much water & decrease greenhouse gases, the Big Ag propaganda machine starts cranking out ads & flooding sm with cries of, “They’re taking away your hamburgers!! They’re saying you can’t eat steak anymore.” It’s just a constant battle against the greed.
I am reminded of the trip I made to the IBM Santa Teresa lab in '74, as a side trip when I interviewed with another Silicon Valley outfit. I drove south past vast fields of black loam dotted with green produce. Six years later, I drove that same road - and saw houses separated by walls as far as the eye could see. So much lush farmland turned into housing. Gone forever.
I have hated the sprawl for decades. Our farmland has been going to housing for YEARS. It is heartbreaking and maddening to subdivisions where there used to be farm vegetation.
What to do with urban sprawl? I don’t have the answer, just as I don’t have the answer to the swelling number of immigrants who want to come and live in my country. Unfortunately, our infrastructure simply cannot keep up with the number of new communities being built in rural areas that used to flourish with working farms. If we accept immigration as a way of life, we must be prepared for less AG land and more urban sprawl. Our new conundrum.
P.J. Custer, greed is the root of all evil. Thanks for posting. As someone who composts, separates trash for recycling, bought a hybrid(now combines trips with neighbors), and came out of the 1960’s with a minimal understanding of ecology, I suffer daily over the wanton disregard, destruction and waste of this once beautiful earth. I fear it is too late for generations down the pike.
Very fine points that should be the basis of basic school education starting at the elementary level, akin to the ancient philosophy schools of Greece and Rome. But will almost always be met with corporate greed machinations (as you point out), knee jerk resistance, ignorance, or just human stupidity (which is an epidemic as real - and more destructive/killing - as COVID. The question for thinkers/doers like all of here on the various substacks is what do we do about it?
I have the impression that republicans and most very wealthy Americans have no use for science unless it supports wh as ever industry they are beholden to, fossil fuels, IT, AI.
Your impression is an insightful perception. And you are probably giving them too much credit in their view of science. Science implies independent thinking, independent agency, observational realism, the ability to accept other outcomes or conclusions than what you want. The conservative, libertarian, christian fundamentalist, wealth-accruing mindset is the opposite of those inherent implications from science and the science philosophy.
Michael, I neglected to mention my delight at your mention of T.C. Boyle, a favored writer of mine (and I'm very picky about the writers I read, and I read a lot), and he is as he describes himself "a life-long left-leaning Democrat." These days I always want to know the politics of a person I'm reading or watching. Thank you for your post - good stuff.
I loved World’s End as well. Have a volume or two of his short stories. I have Road to Wellville, Harder They Come, and San Miguel. He skewers faddish trends with an offbeat tone and style.
During the pandemic I also engorged on Jess Walter’s work. There is a lot of good stuff (and so little time).
And greed's fellow traveler: power. Power over others, including over other species or over the planet itself (as in the biblical dominion clause). Power in relationships, from intimate to state to civilization to planetary, should be a responsibility that comes with reluctance and an incredibly high burden of self awareness and self examination. Instead it is almost always sociopathic.
I've read and re-read comments here and also to Steve's writing as reposted by Michael Moore, and it strikes me that it is a mistake to conflate a natural disaster, in many ways unique to the Southern California climate, topography and history, with a huge pile of grievances and fears percolating in the larger political environment as a result of the recent election. Like others who have written various responses, I was born in California and have lived my life identifying as a proud Californian. I knew my state when it was much less populous -- when "development" had not become entirely synonymous with greed and environmental damage and impending disaster. I can claim a family history in California going back to my grandparents' arrival as workers in the newly-discovered San Joaquin Valley oilfields before 1912. I am also pretty well educated on the history of Mulholland's original diversion of the Owens River to flow into LA's aqueduct to enable LA to grow massively in the 1920s while turning the Owens River Valley into a parched wasteland. As others have said, LA started out as a collection of small towns that eventually ran together. It remains massively dependent on imported water, with or without winter rains. Almost nothing being hypothesized about useless fire hydrants and empty reservoirs does more that touch one corner of a problem built into what the whole of the City and County we refer to as Los Angeles, as well as its adjacent separately-incorporated communities, have become over a hundred years. In focusing on human error, we must not fail to appreciate the part of this story that is topographic and atmospheric and, as far as I know, not caused primarily by human decisions made to spur massive development in LA over time. I now live in the Santa Barbara foothills and I was evacuated twice in the past 20 years -- the Jesusita Fire in 2009 and the Thomas Fire in 2017. The Thomas Fire, in particular, began inland from Ventura and moved steadily westward for most of a week, consuming dry brush and other mountainous vegetation, until finally it moved down from the ridgetops into hillside communities like Montecito. In each fire I was out of my home with my pets for a week; each time I grieved a potential total loss, but was fortunate to return to find my entire neighborhood intact. I am always alert whenever the Santanas sweep wildly over my hillside, blowing toward the Pacific with a force that could transport deck furniture. I periodically think I must move to a safer place because it is would be too awful to lose everything I have saved for a lifetime in another fire, but one cannot live in perpetual fear, so active fear eventually subsides in favor of loving my view of the Pacific every day and renewing a commitment to the life I have here. My point is that conflating the political conditions of today with environmental conditions that are built-in to a large extent, and giving credence to Trump's idiotic rhetorical question, "What is wrong with California's Dem politicians when they can't put out a fire?" just misses the most important things that Californians know to be true living here. A great many Californians are environmentally aware and support environmentally sound policies. We know that earthquakes and fires are possible but we also believe there are innovative ways of structuring the built environment to anticipate and mitigate potential disasters. We choose to live here with eyes wide open. We pay a lot in property taxes and we expect infrastructure to be built and maintained to deal with actual conditions, and regulation to be designed to protect both the citizenry and the natural and built environments from disasters and failures that can be anticipated with science and history and common sense, and local city and county fire departments and dozens of local fire protection districts to be staffed and equipped optimally, and we expect governmental officials to be able and willing to take on the challenges of the offices they seek and not just run for office because they like the status or the perks but have no executive experience or any serious commitment to mastering the complexities of their jobs. So I completely share Steve's frustrations on that score, but solutions will not be found if we fail to recognize the myriad causes and failures that long predate the swearing in of today's elected officials. Donald Trump is a treacherous and meddlesome opportunist, for sure, but he doesn't understand the first thing about California.
Thank you for this thoughtful and thorough comment and, yes, based on being a Californian. While I was a military brat born in Merced County and over a half dozen years lived in other places, I have lived as an adult in SoCal, Fresno County, and now have relocated to Humboldt (and experienced a nice rolling temblor of 7.0 with its attendant tsunami warning). I too wouldn’t live elsewhere. Trump has never been responsible for anything in his life and is a grossly ignorant manchild. Since the fire began, I have been in communication with a former student who lives in a Los Angeles neighborhood south of UCLA—her and my alma mater—she has her car packed and has planned evacuation routes. My heart is with her and others there. I plan to donate to the Red Cross, something Trump doesn’t have or won’t do. When this is done, we can await all the investigations but we’ll see if there is a honest examination of how we live and organize our communities.
Thanks for your comments in response to my writing about my experience of living with fire danger in Santa Barbara. I should have added that I live in a small 1953 house surrounded by similar homes -- no gated mansions with manicured grounds to be seen! I have often thought that if I moved anywhere else in CA it would be Humboldt County, the occasional earthquake notwithstanding. Every so often I open Realtor.com or a similar site and fantasize about north coast/rural property listings. I grew up in Santa Rosa in the 1950s and 1960s when the population was 20,000-30,000, the start of school in the fall was sometimes delayed until the harvesting of the prune crop was completed, all of US 101 was a two or four lane highway that ran through the centers of towns like Gilroy and Salinas and King City, and lush fruit orchards lined both sides of the highway for many miles south of the small city of San Jose. I went to UCSB when it was a new campus of the University, and my introduction to life in LA as a young adult was visiting with a college friend and her family in Bel Air. The endless LA "sprawl" seemed other-worldly. No one growing up in a traditional, historical small town during those years could have imagined that within a couple of decades, suburban sprawl was going to kill off main streets with malls and subdivisions that eventually would blur the boundaries between those places, as well, while swallowing much of the rich agricultural heritage of the state. I appreciate your book recommendations in response to another commentator and look forward to reading them. We are not alone in this experience.
It is always a good thing to share and receive life stories of our lives in California. When my dad retired from the Air Force, we moved to the San Diego area and did not return to Atwater, where my parents had bought a house in 1955. From 1966 to 1986, I lived there aside from my two years at UCLA (JC transfer). We had an opportunity to return to the rural Fresno home of my grandparents as I started my high school teaching career. From there I became more familiar with the Central Coast (loved Cayucos) and explored The City, Berkeley, and the northern coast. When I retired, I moved back to SoCal but it had just become impossible to live there with the traffic congestion so we moved up here and love it. Bought a home (1919) in Eureka with a view of the South Channel of Humboldt Bay and the ocean. Have met an ever expanding group of people who have become friends. And there is a great arts, music, and outdoors community here. A good place for the final chapter of life.
We’re doing terrible as a country and I can guarantee you the evildoers around the world are making plans. We are self-destructing. A recent article in The Atlantic addressed the increasing power of the Christian Fanatics who want to destroy secular government. They seek a Biblical theocracy with a male patriarchy and have 40 million adherents who vote. They believe they will meet their goal and who can say they will not?
They were sorry for me, as believers in the movement were sorry for all of the people who were lost and confused by this moment in America—the doubters, the atheists, the gay people, Muslims, Buddhists, Democrats, journalists, and all the godless who had not yet submitted to what they knew to be true. The Kingdom was here, and the only question was whether you were in, or out.
I don’t think we’re doing as badly as the news says we are doing but the doomsaying makes people afraid and they start heading in a bad direction. The opposition NEEDS us to believe everything has gone down the Xitter for their schemes to work. They never stop talking.
Don't disagree with most. Rather than stick to water limits, wealthy pay higher and higher fines to keep lawns green and pools full. Sylvester Stallone FINALLY had his water turned OFF. Tom Selleck got caught twice hooking up to nearby fire hydrants to water avocado trees. An important question, where should LA get the water? From Northern California or Colorado River? Well, NoCal has fires of its own and droughts and river isn't ours.
Where is that big faucet trump says he can turn on? We need to hit back and embarrass that idiot with messages that reflect his ineptness and idiocy. Dunce hat fitting at inauguration?
He is unapologetically shameless. Pointing out his idiocy is confirmation bias for those who already know he's an idiot yet more fuel to close the cognitive dissonance for his supporters. There is no embarrassment in the guy. Haven't you been paying attention to his hubris and fake outrage?
Carol, I have written a Letter to the Editor of the LA Times and to Governor Newsom about the ultimate fix to the water shortage crisis in all of the American Southwest including southern California. I have a current USA patent and a pending USA patent on my low-energy desalination technology which I have worked the past 17 years to perfect that I can remove over 99 % of the salt from salt water with a concentration of 35,000 parts per million salt which is the salinity of the Pacific Ocean. This technology uses less than 5% of the energy required for reverse osmosis or flash distillation desalination. I can power my desalination plants with solar, wind, and batteries at night. We will collect the sea salt and mine it for lithium because we need lithium for an electric vehicle industry. We will then take the salt to the desert areas in California and establish large greenhouses to grow seaweed which can be turned into jet fuel as the U.S. Air Force has done already and there is enough nutrients in seaweed to make food pellets for animal and human consumption. Seaweed also grows rapidly and will extract huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and produce oxygen by photosynthesis. Nothing gets thrown back into the Pacific Ocean and there are four sources of revenue; fresh water for under $400 per acre foot, lithium, seaweed for synthetic fuel, and food. However, I am inclined to give the food away to attempt to eliminate hunger in California, the USA, and the world.
Carol, I have many “irons in the fire” to move my desalination technology to the industrial prototype stage. I have sent a “letter to the editor” for the Los Angeles Times and a communication to Governor Newsom. Thanks for your suggestion to communicate with Chris Hayes.
Hello Carol: The Israelis use reverse osmosis desalination which pushes the seawater through large iron pipes under 350 pounds per square inch pressure (requires enormous energy) to desalinate. The only energy I require is to move the water slowly (less than 30 rpm) over the reaction plate. I will use less than 5% of the energy required for reverse osmosis desalination. At the moment, desalination by reverse osmosis costs 20 times more than aquifer water because of the enormous energy costs!
My memory might be off, but this was about 1-2 years ago. I think slap on wrist for first one and some type of fine for second one. It would be in the news. There was another well known person who had water turned off that made news same time as Stallone. I can't remember who, so I left it out.
An interesting aside: Many wealthy buy enough land to grow food and get dispensation (tax advantages). I suspect the avocado trees wreak havoc part of that.
I blame the American voters who support Trump and any other politician without doing the most basic research or even caring in many instances. There is little incentive for good people to run when the voters are so superficial and foolish. Until the voters start to do their job, the level of public servants will continue to disintegrate.
Yes. I point to Marsha Blackburn, who just was re-elected in Tennessee. She opposes laws that address equal pay for women and is unsure if laws are even needed to protect women from domestic violence.
Now why would any male or female with purportedly critical thinking skills vote in favor of that?
Bottom line, Maga is hell bent on making every crisis we face worse, climate change and the resulting weather disasters, the wealth gap, inflation, and the staggeringly high national debt:
“House Republicans are passing around a “menu” of more than $5 trillion in cuts they could use to bankroll President-elect Donald Trump’s top priorities this year, including tax cuts and border security. The early list of potential spending offsets obtained by POLITICO includes changes to Medicare and ending Biden administration climate programs, along with slashing welfare and “reimagining” the Affordable Care Act.”
Any half-wit knows “changes to Medicare” means cutting benefits. Ending “climate programs” will speed up global warming, with all the disastrous consequences associated with rising temperatures, including wildfires like the ones currently devastating Southern California. Slashing welfare will further impoverish those already poorly housed, fed, and cared for. “Reimagining” the ACA means anything from eliminating it entirely to slashing subsidies and benefits.
And all this to provide tax cuts for the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. After all, it is expensive for a civilian to fund a flight to outer space or maintain a $500m. yacht.
Trump has begun to make territorial and other demands that alienate traditional allies. And when Canadians dare to object to being “absorbed” by the U.S. Maga media’s Jesse Watters has the gall to tell them he is personally offended by their rejection of the American offer.
Again, you are sounding like a Fox "News" pundit, pointing fingers and making this all about politics. My son lives in LA. I can tell you that sustained winds of 80 to 100 mph from the Santa Ana's has never been seen before. The Santa Ana's come in hot and suck all the humidity out of the air as they sweep in. Guess what, it hasn't rained since May - they have have less than a half an inch of rain since May. So maybe let's refocus this discussion on climate change and the GOP's refusal to do anything about it for the last 40 years. You pointing fingers at Newsom and playing politics at this time when people are literally dying and losing everything is really sickening. NOT A WORD about how the hydrants were not functioning because of the thousands upon thousands of people who were hosing their houses down which destroyed the water pressure. NOT A WORD about how sprinkler systems in homes kept going as soon as fire and smoke licked at the foundation which used millions of gallons of water. NOT A WORD about the effort to fund the LAFD to the tune of $50 million dollars last year alone. This was not a normal fire, this was a monster of epic proportions that is still going and the winds are returning. For you to sound off like a Fox New host is a bridge too far for me. You're obviously still very much a finger pointing do nothing Republicans and I end my subscription today. My son's life is more important than YOUR once again ridiculous and useless opinion.
Mr. Schmidt, We as a nation are never going to take care of this country's lands.
Our brand of capitalism is so barbaric that of course, after 248 years of its poison, it made profit the first consideration and never the public good.
A fascist president like trump will always be in the wings now; it is the inevitable result of our poisonous brand of toxic Capitalism.
Until we get a brand-new constitution that will make a Rich class like ours impossible to have, and tax the rich and share the wealth, another trump clone is waiting in the wings. Under this constitution, "WE", and by our influence, the earth is doomed.
We are species arrogant. We think we have mastered the world - maybe even the universe. Humans, the almighty. Let's just talk among ourselves, surely that is how we gain safety and advantage - UNTIL THE WATER RUNS OUT WHERE YOU NEED IT, and MIGHTY CITIES TRANSFORM INTO VENICE.
We are not masters of the earth, not even stewards of the earth. We should be in partnership with the earth. But we mighty humans , arranged in heirarchies of our own making, with wealth, power, and ambition determining our collective course, must somehow begin to use our very nice brains to understand this one lesson: You ignore Mama Nature at your own peril.
Thank you Lynda, beautifully said. We have taken too much, and still want to take more. The question we are asking is not how can we be conservationists and stewards, but how can we invent new ways to consume more resources.
That reservoir would not have stopped this fire storm. It was mostly a wind event but what sparked the fires? PG&E lines? Someone doing something stupid in the wind? One of the fires was started by an arsonist, was more than one? The whole tragedy will not be addressed by political blaming. We continue to live in beautiful places on a planet that is over populated and stressed to the max.
Yes, overpopulation is a huge problem, & yet we now have religious nut jobs gaining more & more power who are dead set on getting rid of the ways we’ve discovered to control population growth, & want to instead force women to have more babies.
Laurel, the people that are elected are the ones who are supposed to manage these catastrophes as they are happening in order to protect life and property. People need to be held accountable. When you say there shouldn't be "political blaming" you are saying our votes really don't matter. We just vote these people in as a civic exercise and that's the end of it, until the next election. I'm not sure you are aware, but there's now an investigation on PG&E with regards to them and the city government not sitting down together, as this wind event was gearing up, to work out which lines should have been turned off during the height of the wind in order to prevent the lines from causing the fires. Is that not incompetence that should be addressed? Should we not "blame" those who were in charge of having to do that job? For god's sake, is there no one in your world who can be held responsible beside the Santa Anna Winds? If the power was turned off appropriately, then there would not have been the kind of ignition source that has cause MANY! a fire in recent history all over this country, including my Colorado, and Hawaii.
No need to attack. I never said our votes don’t matter and I did mention the PG&E lines. I’m a native Californian and have been involved in and affected by several huge fires. I don’t appreciate the MAGA folks “politically blaming” and wanting to withhold funds because CA is a “blue state”. I wish your comment didn’t sound so condescending. I’m “well aware”.
They can wait until the fires are extinguished and for the chaos to die down, then make a sober assessment of how or if it could have been better handled.
So, Mayor Bass can slink in the back door of LA City Hall from Ghana without a news reporter seeing her and therefore then rewrite a story about the mayor slinking into City Hall through the back door? Reporters are gonna report and the citizenry is gonna comment on that reporting. That's the way this system works, right?
We are not out of the woods yet here in Los Angeles. Yes seems there are plenty to blame for initial response including hurricane force winds with fire. Blaming politicians for right now is not helpful, but I know politics will do what they do. Praying for all affected, calm winds and a stop to these vicious fires.
As a former teacher I cannot say this enough times: our corrupt schools are the root cause our nation has gone stupid. Schools are boring. People don’t want to know them so they’ve become treasure chests for those running them rather than the pillar of democracy their intended purpose. Nothing inept surprises me now that we’ve had decades of corrupt schools “educating” our leaders. When people finally listen to teachers blowing the whistle at WhiteChalkCrime.com they will know exactly why we’re dissenting into chaos and exactly what to do. And that includes you too Steve. You’re too smart to not know what dedicated teachers know. It’s the missing piece of the democracy puzzle.
According to the LA Times Jan 10 the original city budget did not include the increases to the Fire Dept that approved $53 million in salary costs as well as $58 million for new fire trucks and equipment. These negotiations were separate and approved in November. I do not know all the ins and outs of LA government but it seems as though everyone is pointing the finger at someone else which is less than helpful while the fires are still burning.
One of the most catastrophic casualties of the Internet has been the nearly complete death of local journalism. Steve is right, it is gone. But not because of vapidity, it's because advertising dollars left newspapers and magazines in a move so massive, it left them without money, they folded, the journalists were let go, local actual journalism has dried up.
The great scholar and champion of Democracy, Professor Tim Snyder, puts the creation of new local journalism at the top of the priorities for any America that wishes to be Free.
Second point, we will find many failures when we sift through the ashes of this horrifying American catastrophe. But the big one is rarely mentioned. Tragically, the major culprit is me, and you, and every American who ever voted for anyone who would help oil and gas burn without limit, or failed to stop them from coming to power.
In these days of mourning Jimmy Carter, take a look at his speech on installing the solar panels in the White House 50 years (!) ago. He tells us we better get off oil and gas. He tells us solar energy is available to every person. He tells us solar power cannot be used as an economic weapon (like OPEC did, and how Putin does now). He tells us solar power will not heat the planet, produces no pollution.
Every American from 1978 onward has been told that burning oil and gas would destroy us, and Carter pointed the way out of catastrophe. But we chose Reagan. We laughed at solar energy. And the result is that Pacific nations are sinking, Los Angeles is starting its path to becoming uninhabitable, Miami and Houston will be below water, and in time so will NY and Washington and most coastal cities. Crops will fail and millions will suffer.
Surely, we will find states and cities that did not do this or that. But the real culprit will be America, my country, for laughing at the looming catastrophe, and now that it is upon us, looking at it stunned, unable to act. And what did we, our nation do in the face of this horror, put into power the perfect people to burn the rest of the place down.
Want to do something to keep the climate change catastrophes from really taking off?
Even that will not help as long as ANY Democrat continues to take campaign donations from any oil & gas related business or CEO, & that would have to include the banking entities that fund oil & gas.
The horrific images & loss in LA are directly related to climate change.
Empty reservoirs should be the 1st & boldest headline. The reservoirs are empty because they haven’t had rain in 8 months. Fire season lasts longer, burn harder & are hitting more structures & homes due to urban sprawl.
Also, respectfully, no amount of water is going to stop hurricane force winds during a firestorm like that. Those brave firefighters risking their lives- when the reservoir is dry.
Maria, the reservoirs in that area are not filled by rainwater. They are filled by sources like the Colorado River. Additionally, the last 2 years saw record rain in those areas. This caused the vegetation to grow prolifically. What DIDN'T happen as a result of this growth, was a human decision to mitigate this growth with serious brush removal by ALL of the municipalities in the area, and by citizens in those municipalities creating "defensible space" around their homes. People and government officials new of the necessity to do this but no government stepped up to do their job. ALL communities living in an "urban/rural interface" has known this necessity ever since the building of communities in the mountainous regions of California and anywhere else in the west in the Rockies, where I live. It's human stupidity and incompetence on all levels that has let the Santa Anna Winds be singularly blamed for all of this hot mess. Life itself can be a dangerous undertaking at times, but when proper steps are taken to mitigate the danger, it's so much easier to live another day.
Et tu, Steve? Need someone to blame for a natural disaster? How about sustained 70+ mile per hour winds? How about no rain for months? Ever try to douse a backyard bbq in the wind? Multiply that a million-fold and you’ve got just one of the LA fires. There are many things that could have been done to prevent or, at least, minimize the damage. But the most obvious one was ignored, because millions want to live in an area that was once a desert and is prone to landslides and earthquakes. Enough with the finger pointing. At least wait until the fires are out and the danger subsides.
Thank you for your comment. I have a year’s subscription and I’ve also become tired of the finger pointing in Steve’s daily essays. I’ve commented a few times that people don’t need to be reminded about what’s wrong with America or the world. He’s preaching to the mostly converted, but I for one am tired of the finger pointing. I belong to other Substacks where the authors are seeking ways to stay relevant during these difficult times. They all project a sense of calm and introspection. Alas, Steve has become more negative all the while complaining about how difficult it is to grow his readership. I have a suggestion: become more positive in your outlook and stop pointing fingers at what you consider inept people. You already have one who in 9 days will be sitting in the highest office of your land. No need for more than one.
I agree with your viewpoint and I also regret subscribing to Steve's Substack. He has become increasingly negative ever since Trump won reelection and his column is not helpful if we are to endure the next 4 years. Something has to change. I'm almost ready to cancel my subscription but since it's paid for I keep hoping Steve changes his column. I feel worse after I listen to him but stronger when I listen to other Substack columnist as they give me something to think about. I hope Steve's not blindsided as his readership declines. For right now I'll listen to him with the thought I will not renew.
I appreciate you sharing your comment. As a Canadian I pay $100 per year to read Steve. This is a lot of money to spend on essays that foment anger and finger pointing and frankly I’m reaching my limit of tolerance. As you said something happened after Trump won.
I canceled my subscription a couple of weeks back because of Steve’s incessant Biden-bashing. He does have a tendency to lash out when situations are complex. However, I can’t help but read his Substack and watch his YouTubes, at least until my subscription expires!
Me too. But if his writing continues to anger me rather than inspire I'll immediately cancel my subscription. If he can inform me on today's politics I'll listen until the end. When he starts bashing elected officials that I believe in such as President Biden I tune him out. There are many more journalists on Substack who inspire me. There's not enough time in my day to listen to negative/mediocre ones.
Cam from canuckia, agreed. It is easy to find and assess blame in ANYTHING found negative. I am sure I could delve into negative territory given a disaster of biblical proportions. Steve did his much too often negative slam and insured his readers suffer. We, well, I do not have time for this deep dive into political landscaping. Currently I am figuring out how to best donate time, money and efforts to assist people affected in California. Politics be damned. They are always, you guessed it, POLITICS.
CAM from CA. When and where has Steve complained about difficulty growing his readership? That's weird! He's never done that. You are making shit up, just like MAGA.
THIS IS THE PARAGRAPH THAT’S APPENDED AT THE BOTTOM OF THE EMAILS THAT I RECEIVE FROM THE WARNING.
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Read your GD email before you throw aspersions on people.
The other social media platforms don't allow "controversial" musings like Steve's. His writings are flagged and eliminated from those platforms. Basically, he is censored. He doesn't have "difficulty" growing his subscriber base because of his "finger pointing" etc or that he is a shitting commentator, as you have implied. Why don't you just get your $$ back and beat foot out of here if you don't like it.
The only one making stuff up here is you. For your edification, there is no refund on Substacks - zero, zilch. So once again, before you vomit idiocies, please read and become informed.
Yeah, I'm thinking what about all the republicans denying climate change and vetoing any step to help slow it down? We're getting more fires and hurricanes due to the fact our planet is dying and the billionaires and Republicans who serve them don't care. The whole planet is either on fire or drowning but as long as their mindset is "Well I got mine, screw everyone else" it'll only get worse. For everyone. Unless these billionaires with the help of elon muck find a way to build a space station, like the one in Elysium, where they can all go to live in serenity and comfort. We will be left behind to burn or drown in the mess they enabled if not created. Mic drop.
Had I written a response, this would have been it. How many pictures have I seen with firefighters hosing down an inferno? A lot. It was the weather and the wind. And then the picture of at least 7-8 firemen standing in front of a house and watching it burn. Let the independent investigation go forward, if the fires ever stop…
They were watching in helpless despair. When they connected to the hydrant there was no water. The supply reservoir was empty.
Uh, maybe suburban sprawl is an issue. L.A. County is mostly desert. See Polanski’s “Chinatown.” I agree municipal politics is where it happens—but when was the last rain in L.A.? May? Big Ag takes a lot of water to grow pistachios, pomegranates, almonds, etc., in the San Joaquin Valley and they bitch about not getting water. This is far more complex an issue that will not be solved by finger-wagging. Hold accountable, yes. But have you driven I-5 out of the Grapevine, more and more subdivisions after a mountain top has been flattened. Freeways constantly widened. Insane build out. But then again what municipal departments are in charge of 100 mph winds, Santa Ana’s on steroids. Take a breath, Steve, read something by the late Mike Davis, “City of Quartz” or “Ecology of Fear.” But then he was a leftie. Prefer literature? T.C. Boyle’s “Tortilla Curtain,” which mixes immigration, encroachment on wildlife’s habitat, and wildfires. It was going to happen. Yes, I hope people are held accountable, especially the People and their complacency.
Excellent critical thinking and literary-resource-citing here, Michael. Love the Chinatown reference. Steve is doing some purple provoking here with his punchy alliteration and thinking that firing or voting out people is going to profoundly change anything. Finger pointing for affect already, and Steve is jumping right into it.
People wanted to live in homes up in the chaparral brush with views, developers built. Nobody except truly smart ecologists and climate change experts were saying No, don't do that, and nobody in city or county planning was saying Okay we have to clear all the chaparral down to the ground and build huge fire breaks in anticipation of ordinary wildfires, let along hurricane fires. And the greed-centric developers and bankers and real estate people and anybody else who could make a buck off the mountain vista developments and near suburb build out would fight that to the death. And definitely the empty reservoir for repairs in the Palisades is a token of absolute hubris and dereliction in the face of Nature, and we don't know the story on that yet, but why put up a token reservoir if you're building up in all the chaparral with Santa Ana winds growing more intense over the past 15 years? It's greed and stupidity writ large and hubris that is one of humankind's deepest flaws. Let's say a climate-change savvy, prescient mayor of LA said we need to clear all the chaparral around all the mountain/canyon developments flowing down into LA, and need enormous fire breaks built, and let's hire a CCC-Roosevelt like corp of undocumented immigrants and pay them a living wage of $20 an hour to do all that clearing and keep it cleared. Would he or she be elected? Very improbable. And she or he would be fiercely opposed by the greed-quislings represented by Trump and Musk and Ramaswamy and Zuckerburg, and all the ones (democrats or republicans) wanting more money, and all the pseudo intellectual fascist enablers surrounding Trump and all the people who voted for Trump and his enablers/collaborators either in a permanent condition of stupidity, or because they did not bother to think things through even a tiny tiny little bit and with a tiny tiny amount of altruism or empathy for others and for other species. And I really worry for all the pets and farm animals as well as for fellow humans this greed/hubris/enjoy-the-view-desire brought upon us.
You are absolutely right that it is really absolute insanity to continue to allow more & more encroachments of human habitation up steep mountainsides in the middle of a dry brush desert.
You are also correct that if a person ran for political office on a platform of limiting that, or forcing it to be developed in the maximally environmentally sane way, that person would never win…except maybe, just maybe, following this enormous disaster.
The human species, & especially most Americans, just can’t seem to grasp the concept of delayed gratification or cutting back their wants for the good of the community, the nation, or the planet as a whole. Trying to get folks to even give up maybe half of the meat that they eat, not all, just half, is just about impossible. The minute you mention that if we would just cut back on our meat consumption it would save so much water & decrease greenhouse gases, the Big Ag propaganda machine starts cranking out ads & flooding sm with cries of, “They’re taking away your hamburgers!! They’re saying you can’t eat steak anymore.” It’s just a constant battle against the greed.
I am reminded of the trip I made to the IBM Santa Teresa lab in '74, as a side trip when I interviewed with another Silicon Valley outfit. I drove south past vast fields of black loam dotted with green produce. Six years later, I drove that same road - and saw houses separated by walls as far as the eye could see. So much lush farmland turned into housing. Gone forever.
I have hated the sprawl for decades. Our farmland has been going to housing for YEARS. It is heartbreaking and maddening to subdivisions where there used to be farm vegetation.
What to do with urban sprawl? I don’t have the answer, just as I don’t have the answer to the swelling number of immigrants who want to come and live in my country. Unfortunately, our infrastructure simply cannot keep up with the number of new communities being built in rural areas that used to flourish with working farms. If we accept immigration as a way of life, we must be prepared for less AG land and more urban sprawl. Our new conundrum.
P.J. Custer, greed is the root of all evil. Thanks for posting. As someone who composts, separates trash for recycling, bought a hybrid(now combines trips with neighbors), and came out of the 1960’s with a minimal understanding of ecology, I suffer daily over the wanton disregard, destruction and waste of this once beautiful earth. I fear it is too late for generations down the pike.
Very fine points that should be the basis of basic school education starting at the elementary level, akin to the ancient philosophy schools of Greece and Rome. But will almost always be met with corporate greed machinations (as you point out), knee jerk resistance, ignorance, or just human stupidity (which is an epidemic as real - and more destructive/killing - as COVID. The question for thinkers/doers like all of here on the various substacks is what do we do about it?
I have the impression that republicans and most very wealthy Americans have no use for science unless it supports wh as ever industry they are beholden to, fossil fuels, IT, AI.
Your impression is an insightful perception. And you are probably giving them too much credit in their view of science. Science implies independent thinking, independent agency, observational realism, the ability to accept other outcomes or conclusions than what you want. The conservative, libertarian, christian fundamentalist, wealth-accruing mindset is the opposite of those inherent implications from science and the science philosophy.
Well argued and a great extension of what I was trying to say on early morning coffee and two pieces of toast.
Michael, I neglected to mention my delight at your mention of T.C. Boyle, a favored writer of mine (and I'm very picky about the writers I read, and I read a lot), and he is as he describes himself "a life-long left-leaning Democrat." These days I always want to know the politics of a person I'm reading or watching. Thank you for your post - good stuff.
I loved World’s End as well. Have a volume or two of his short stories. I have Road to Wellville, Harder They Come, and San Miguel. He skewers faddish trends with an offbeat tone and style.
During the pandemic I also engorged on Jess Walter’s work. There is a lot of good stuff (and so little time).
Mr. James, greed is the root of all evil. Thanks for the reminder.
And greed's fellow traveler: power. Power over others, including over other species or over the planet itself (as in the biblical dominion clause). Power in relationships, from intimate to state to civilization to planetary, should be a responsibility that comes with reluctance and an incredibly high burden of self awareness and self examination. Instead it is almost always sociopathic.
I've read and re-read comments here and also to Steve's writing as reposted by Michael Moore, and it strikes me that it is a mistake to conflate a natural disaster, in many ways unique to the Southern California climate, topography and history, with a huge pile of grievances and fears percolating in the larger political environment as a result of the recent election. Like others who have written various responses, I was born in California and have lived my life identifying as a proud Californian. I knew my state when it was much less populous -- when "development" had not become entirely synonymous with greed and environmental damage and impending disaster. I can claim a family history in California going back to my grandparents' arrival as workers in the newly-discovered San Joaquin Valley oilfields before 1912. I am also pretty well educated on the history of Mulholland's original diversion of the Owens River to flow into LA's aqueduct to enable LA to grow massively in the 1920s while turning the Owens River Valley into a parched wasteland. As others have said, LA started out as a collection of small towns that eventually ran together. It remains massively dependent on imported water, with or without winter rains. Almost nothing being hypothesized about useless fire hydrants and empty reservoirs does more that touch one corner of a problem built into what the whole of the City and County we refer to as Los Angeles, as well as its adjacent separately-incorporated communities, have become over a hundred years. In focusing on human error, we must not fail to appreciate the part of this story that is topographic and atmospheric and, as far as I know, not caused primarily by human decisions made to spur massive development in LA over time. I now live in the Santa Barbara foothills and I was evacuated twice in the past 20 years -- the Jesusita Fire in 2009 and the Thomas Fire in 2017. The Thomas Fire, in particular, began inland from Ventura and moved steadily westward for most of a week, consuming dry brush and other mountainous vegetation, until finally it moved down from the ridgetops into hillside communities like Montecito. In each fire I was out of my home with my pets for a week; each time I grieved a potential total loss, but was fortunate to return to find my entire neighborhood intact. I am always alert whenever the Santanas sweep wildly over my hillside, blowing toward the Pacific with a force that could transport deck furniture. I periodically think I must move to a safer place because it is would be too awful to lose everything I have saved for a lifetime in another fire, but one cannot live in perpetual fear, so active fear eventually subsides in favor of loving my view of the Pacific every day and renewing a commitment to the life I have here. My point is that conflating the political conditions of today with environmental conditions that are built-in to a large extent, and giving credence to Trump's idiotic rhetorical question, "What is wrong with California's Dem politicians when they can't put out a fire?" just misses the most important things that Californians know to be true living here. A great many Californians are environmentally aware and support environmentally sound policies. We know that earthquakes and fires are possible but we also believe there are innovative ways of structuring the built environment to anticipate and mitigate potential disasters. We choose to live here with eyes wide open. We pay a lot in property taxes and we expect infrastructure to be built and maintained to deal with actual conditions, and regulation to be designed to protect both the citizenry and the natural and built environments from disasters and failures that can be anticipated with science and history and common sense, and local city and county fire departments and dozens of local fire protection districts to be staffed and equipped optimally, and we expect governmental officials to be able and willing to take on the challenges of the offices they seek and not just run for office because they like the status or the perks but have no executive experience or any serious commitment to mastering the complexities of their jobs. So I completely share Steve's frustrations on that score, but solutions will not be found if we fail to recognize the myriad causes and failures that long predate the swearing in of today's elected officials. Donald Trump is a treacherous and meddlesome opportunist, for sure, but he doesn't understand the first thing about California.
Thank you for this thoughtful and thorough comment and, yes, based on being a Californian. While I was a military brat born in Merced County and over a half dozen years lived in other places, I have lived as an adult in SoCal, Fresno County, and now have relocated to Humboldt (and experienced a nice rolling temblor of 7.0 with its attendant tsunami warning). I too wouldn’t live elsewhere. Trump has never been responsible for anything in his life and is a grossly ignorant manchild. Since the fire began, I have been in communication with a former student who lives in a Los Angeles neighborhood south of UCLA—her and my alma mater—she has her car packed and has planned evacuation routes. My heart is with her and others there. I plan to donate to the Red Cross, something Trump doesn’t have or won’t do. When this is done, we can await all the investigations but we’ll see if there is a honest examination of how we live and organize our communities.
Thanks for your comments in response to my writing about my experience of living with fire danger in Santa Barbara. I should have added that I live in a small 1953 house surrounded by similar homes -- no gated mansions with manicured grounds to be seen! I have often thought that if I moved anywhere else in CA it would be Humboldt County, the occasional earthquake notwithstanding. Every so often I open Realtor.com or a similar site and fantasize about north coast/rural property listings. I grew up in Santa Rosa in the 1950s and 1960s when the population was 20,000-30,000, the start of school in the fall was sometimes delayed until the harvesting of the prune crop was completed, all of US 101 was a two or four lane highway that ran through the centers of towns like Gilroy and Salinas and King City, and lush fruit orchards lined both sides of the highway for many miles south of the small city of San Jose. I went to UCSB when it was a new campus of the University, and my introduction to life in LA as a young adult was visiting with a college friend and her family in Bel Air. The endless LA "sprawl" seemed other-worldly. No one growing up in a traditional, historical small town during those years could have imagined that within a couple of decades, suburban sprawl was going to kill off main streets with malls and subdivisions that eventually would blur the boundaries between those places, as well, while swallowing much of the rich agricultural heritage of the state. I appreciate your book recommendations in response to another commentator and look forward to reading them. We are not alone in this experience.
It is always a good thing to share and receive life stories of our lives in California. When my dad retired from the Air Force, we moved to the San Diego area and did not return to Atwater, where my parents had bought a house in 1955. From 1966 to 1986, I lived there aside from my two years at UCLA (JC transfer). We had an opportunity to return to the rural Fresno home of my grandparents as I started my high school teaching career. From there I became more familiar with the Central Coast (loved Cayucos) and explored The City, Berkeley, and the northern coast. When I retired, I moved back to SoCal but it had just become impossible to live there with the traffic congestion so we moved up here and love it. Bought a home (1919) in Eureka with a view of the South Channel of Humboldt Bay and the ocean. Have met an ever expanding group of people who have become friends. And there is a great arts, music, and outdoors community here. A good place for the final chapter of life.
We’re doing terrible as a country and I can guarantee you the evildoers around the world are making plans. We are self-destructing. A recent article in The Atlantic addressed the increasing power of the Christian Fanatics who want to destroy secular government. They seek a Biblical theocracy with a male patriarchy and have 40 million adherents who vote. They believe they will meet their goal and who can say they will not?
Do not vote for these dominionists for any office, from school board office all the way up to president.
I read that article as well. Wow.
From the article:
They were sorry for me, as believers in the movement were sorry for all of the people who were lost and confused by this moment in America—the doubters, the atheists, the gay people, Muslims, Buddhists, Democrats, journalists, and all the godless who had not yet submitted to what they knew to be true. The Kingdom was here, and the only question was whether you were in, or out.
The bane of “wide open arms” is that you might get stabbed in the throat.
As we head towards Gilead the horror will increase until we self-destruct. I am clinging to hope but that thread is getting mighty thin.
I don’t think we’re doing as badly as the news says we are doing but the doomsaying makes people afraid and they start heading in a bad direction. The opposition NEEDS us to believe everything has gone down the Xitter for their schemes to work. They never stop talking.
Don't disagree with most. Rather than stick to water limits, wealthy pay higher and higher fines to keep lawns green and pools full. Sylvester Stallone FINALLY had his water turned OFF. Tom Selleck got caught twice hooking up to nearby fire hydrants to water avocado trees. An important question, where should LA get the water? From Northern California or Colorado River? Well, NoCal has fires of its own and droughts and river isn't ours.
Where is that big faucet trump says he can turn on? We need to hit back and embarrass that idiot with messages that reflect his ineptness and idiocy. Dunce hat fitting at inauguration?
He is unapologetically shameless. Pointing out his idiocy is confirmation bias for those who already know he's an idiot yet more fuel to close the cognitive dissonance for his supporters. There is no embarrassment in the guy. Haven't you been paying attention to his hubris and fake outrage?
I think his big faucet weave is to justify taking over Canada to his devotees.
Carol, I have written a Letter to the Editor of the LA Times and to Governor Newsom about the ultimate fix to the water shortage crisis in all of the American Southwest including southern California. I have a current USA patent and a pending USA patent on my low-energy desalination technology which I have worked the past 17 years to perfect that I can remove over 99 % of the salt from salt water with a concentration of 35,000 parts per million salt which is the salinity of the Pacific Ocean. This technology uses less than 5% of the energy required for reverse osmosis or flash distillation desalination. I can power my desalination plants with solar, wind, and batteries at night. We will collect the sea salt and mine it for lithium because we need lithium for an electric vehicle industry. We will then take the salt to the desert areas in California and establish large greenhouses to grow seaweed which can be turned into jet fuel as the U.S. Air Force has done already and there is enough nutrients in seaweed to make food pellets for animal and human consumption. Seaweed also grows rapidly and will extract huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and produce oxygen by photosynthesis. Nothing gets thrown back into the Pacific Ocean and there are four sources of revenue; fresh water for under $400 per acre foot, lithium, seaweed for synthetic fuel, and food. However, I am inclined to give the food away to attempt to eliminate hunger in California, the USA, and the world.
This sounds amazing
Thanks KAO!
Make all that be true and make it happen dear lord.
Thanks Susan!!!
How does your desalination process compare to Israel's? Aren't they a leader?
Carol, I have many “irons in the fire” to move my desalination technology to the industrial prototype stage. I have sent a “letter to the editor” for the Los Angeles Times and a communication to Governor Newsom. Thanks for your suggestion to communicate with Chris Hayes.
Hello Carol: The Israelis use reverse osmosis desalination which pushes the seawater through large iron pipes under 350 pounds per square inch pressure (requires enormous energy) to desalinate. The only energy I require is to move the water slowly (less than 30 rpm) over the reaction plate. I will use less than 5% of the energy required for reverse osmosis desalination. At the moment, desalination by reverse osmosis costs 20 times more than aquifer water because of the enormous energy costs!
Condense your writing and send it to someone who understands. I suggest Chris Hayes.
Good luck.
What was the Selleck fine?
My memory might be off, but this was about 1-2 years ago. I think slap on wrist for first one and some type of fine for second one. It would be in the news. There was another well known person who had water turned off that made news same time as Stallone. I can't remember who, so I left it out.
An interesting aside: Many wealthy buy enough land to grow food and get dispensation (tax advantages). I suspect the avocado trees wreak havoc part of that.
I blame the American voters who support Trump and any other politician without doing the most basic research or even caring in many instances. There is little incentive for good people to run when the voters are so superficial and foolish. Until the voters start to do their job, the level of public servants will continue to disintegrate.
Yes. I point to Marsha Blackburn, who just was re-elected in Tennessee. She opposes laws that address equal pay for women and is unsure if laws are even needed to protect women from domestic violence.
Now why would any male or female with purportedly critical thinking skills vote in favor of that?
Blackburn serves only the three branches of government: Pharmaceutical, Energy, and Banking. I do understand her ability to get re-elected.
Not understand…,
Her background is "home economics." In other words, she can make a dress and bake a pie.
Agree
We only need look at house of
House of Representatives. Fail to serve other than themselves. Marjorie Greene.?
Bottom line, Maga is hell bent on making every crisis we face worse, climate change and the resulting weather disasters, the wealth gap, inflation, and the staggeringly high national debt:
“House Republicans are passing around a “menu” of more than $5 trillion in cuts they could use to bankroll President-elect Donald Trump’s top priorities this year, including tax cuts and border security. The early list of potential spending offsets obtained by POLITICO includes changes to Medicare and ending Biden administration climate programs, along with slashing welfare and “reimagining” the Affordable Care Act.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/10/spending-cuts-house-gop-reconciliation-medicaid-00197541
Any half-wit knows “changes to Medicare” means cutting benefits. Ending “climate programs” will speed up global warming, with all the disastrous consequences associated with rising temperatures, including wildfires like the ones currently devastating Southern California. Slashing welfare will further impoverish those already poorly housed, fed, and cared for. “Reimagining” the ACA means anything from eliminating it entirely to slashing subsidies and benefits.
And all this to provide tax cuts for the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. After all, it is expensive for a civilian to fund a flight to outer space or maintain a $500m. yacht.
Trump has begun to make territorial and other demands that alienate traditional allies. And when Canadians dare to object to being “absorbed” by the U.S. Maga media’s Jesse Watters has the gall to tell them he is personally offended by their rejection of the American offer.
Thank you very much, Evangelical Christians.
Again, you are sounding like a Fox "News" pundit, pointing fingers and making this all about politics. My son lives in LA. I can tell you that sustained winds of 80 to 100 mph from the Santa Ana's has never been seen before. The Santa Ana's come in hot and suck all the humidity out of the air as they sweep in. Guess what, it hasn't rained since May - they have have less than a half an inch of rain since May. So maybe let's refocus this discussion on climate change and the GOP's refusal to do anything about it for the last 40 years. You pointing fingers at Newsom and playing politics at this time when people are literally dying and losing everything is really sickening. NOT A WORD about how the hydrants were not functioning because of the thousands upon thousands of people who were hosing their houses down which destroyed the water pressure. NOT A WORD about how sprinkler systems in homes kept going as soon as fire and smoke licked at the foundation which used millions of gallons of water. NOT A WORD about the effort to fund the LAFD to the tune of $50 million dollars last year alone. This was not a normal fire, this was a monster of epic proportions that is still going and the winds are returning. For you to sound off like a Fox New host is a bridge too far for me. You're obviously still very much a finger pointing do nothing Republicans and I end my subscription today. My son's life is more important than YOUR once again ridiculous and useless opinion.
Mr. Schmidt, We as a nation are never going to take care of this country's lands.
Our brand of capitalism is so barbaric that of course, after 248 years of its poison, it made profit the first consideration and never the public good.
A fascist president like trump will always be in the wings now; it is the inevitable result of our poisonous brand of toxic Capitalism.
Until we get a brand-new constitution that will make a Rich class like ours impossible to have, and tax the rich and share the wealth, another trump clone is waiting in the wings. Under this constitution, "WE", and by our influence, the earth is doomed.
The “WE” has perhaps been misinterpreted by those never meant to be represented by it.
We as a nation was the intended recipent. No particlar Groove should think it was intended for them. In England, they would say it's the Royal WE.
We are species arrogant. We think we have mastered the world - maybe even the universe. Humans, the almighty. Let's just talk among ourselves, surely that is how we gain safety and advantage - UNTIL THE WATER RUNS OUT WHERE YOU NEED IT, and MIGHTY CITIES TRANSFORM INTO VENICE.
We are not masters of the earth, not even stewards of the earth. We should be in partnership with the earth. But we mighty humans , arranged in heirarchies of our own making, with wealth, power, and ambition determining our collective course, must somehow begin to use our very nice brains to understand this one lesson: You ignore Mama Nature at your own peril.
Thank you Lynda, beautifully said. We have taken too much, and still want to take more. The question we are asking is not how can we be conservationists and stewards, but how can we invent new ways to consume more resources.
That reservoir would not have stopped this fire storm. It was mostly a wind event but what sparked the fires? PG&E lines? Someone doing something stupid in the wind? One of the fires was started by an arsonist, was more than one? The whole tragedy will not be addressed by political blaming. We continue to live in beautiful places on a planet that is over populated and stressed to the max.
Yes, overpopulation is a huge problem, & yet we now have religious nut jobs gaining more & more power who are dead set on getting rid of the ways we’ve discovered to control population growth, & want to instead force women to have more babies.
It’s insanity.
Laurel, the people that are elected are the ones who are supposed to manage these catastrophes as they are happening in order to protect life and property. People need to be held accountable. When you say there shouldn't be "political blaming" you are saying our votes really don't matter. We just vote these people in as a civic exercise and that's the end of it, until the next election. I'm not sure you are aware, but there's now an investigation on PG&E with regards to them and the city government not sitting down together, as this wind event was gearing up, to work out which lines should have been turned off during the height of the wind in order to prevent the lines from causing the fires. Is that not incompetence that should be addressed? Should we not "blame" those who were in charge of having to do that job? For god's sake, is there no one in your world who can be held responsible beside the Santa Anna Winds? If the power was turned off appropriately, then there would not have been the kind of ignition source that has cause MANY! a fire in recent history all over this country, including my Colorado, and Hawaii.
No need to attack. I never said our votes don’t matter and I did mention the PG&E lines. I’m a native Californian and have been involved in and affected by several huge fires. I don’t appreciate the MAGA folks “politically blaming” and wanting to withhold funds because CA is a “blue state”. I wish your comment didn’t sound so condescending. I’m “well aware”.
They can wait until the fires are extinguished and for the chaos to die down, then make a sober assessment of how or if it could have been better handled.
So, Mayor Bass can slink in the back door of LA City Hall from Ghana without a news reporter seeing her and therefore then rewrite a story about the mayor slinking into City Hall through the back door? Reporters are gonna report and the citizenry is gonna comment on that reporting. That's the way this system works, right?
Tone deaf sense of timing.
We are not out of the woods yet here in Los Angeles. Yes seems there are plenty to blame for initial response including hurricane force winds with fire. Blaming politicians for right now is not helpful, but I know politics will do what they do. Praying for all affected, calm winds and a stop to these vicious fires.
As a former teacher I cannot say this enough times: our corrupt schools are the root cause our nation has gone stupid. Schools are boring. People don’t want to know them so they’ve become treasure chests for those running them rather than the pillar of democracy their intended purpose. Nothing inept surprises me now that we’ve had decades of corrupt schools “educating” our leaders. When people finally listen to teachers blowing the whistle at WhiteChalkCrime.com they will know exactly why we’re dissenting into chaos and exactly what to do. And that includes you too Steve. You’re too smart to not know what dedicated teachers know. It’s the missing piece of the democracy puzzle.
According to the LA Times Jan 10 the original city budget did not include the increases to the Fire Dept that approved $53 million in salary costs as well as $58 million for new fire trucks and equipment. These negotiations were separate and approved in November. I do not know all the ins and outs of LA government but it seems as though everyone is pointing the finger at someone else which is less than helpful while the fires are still burning.
Or ever
One of the most catastrophic casualties of the Internet has been the nearly complete death of local journalism. Steve is right, it is gone. But not because of vapidity, it's because advertising dollars left newspapers and magazines in a move so massive, it left them without money, they folded, the journalists were let go, local actual journalism has dried up.
The great scholar and champion of Democracy, Professor Tim Snyder, puts the creation of new local journalism at the top of the priorities for any America that wishes to be Free.
Second point, we will find many failures when we sift through the ashes of this horrifying American catastrophe. But the big one is rarely mentioned. Tragically, the major culprit is me, and you, and every American who ever voted for anyone who would help oil and gas burn without limit, or failed to stop them from coming to power.
In these days of mourning Jimmy Carter, take a look at his speech on installing the solar panels in the White House 50 years (!) ago. He tells us we better get off oil and gas. He tells us solar energy is available to every person. He tells us solar power cannot be used as an economic weapon (like OPEC did, and how Putin does now). He tells us solar power will not heat the planet, produces no pollution.
Every American from 1978 onward has been told that burning oil and gas would destroy us, and Carter pointed the way out of catastrophe. But we chose Reagan. We laughed at solar energy. And the result is that Pacific nations are sinking, Los Angeles is starting its path to becoming uninhabitable, Miami and Houston will be below water, and in time so will NY and Washington and most coastal cities. Crops will fail and millions will suffer.
Surely, we will find states and cities that did not do this or that. But the real culprit will be America, my country, for laughing at the looming catastrophe, and now that it is upon us, looking at it stunned, unable to act. And what did we, our nation do in the face of this horror, put into power the perfect people to burn the rest of the place down.
Want to do something to keep the climate change catastrophes from really taking off?
Win the midterms.
Arthur
Even that will not help as long as ANY Democrat continues to take campaign donations from any oil & gas related business or CEO, & that would have to include the banking entities that fund oil & gas.
🎯
The horrific images & loss in LA are directly related to climate change.
Empty reservoirs should be the 1st & boldest headline. The reservoirs are empty because they haven’t had rain in 8 months. Fire season lasts longer, burn harder & are hitting more structures & homes due to urban sprawl.
Also, respectfully, no amount of water is going to stop hurricane force winds during a firestorm like that. Those brave firefighters risking their lives- when the reservoir is dry.
Maria, the reservoirs in that area are not filled by rainwater. They are filled by sources like the Colorado River. Additionally, the last 2 years saw record rain in those areas. This caused the vegetation to grow prolifically. What DIDN'T happen as a result of this growth, was a human decision to mitigate this growth with serious brush removal by ALL of the municipalities in the area, and by citizens in those municipalities creating "defensible space" around their homes. People and government officials new of the necessity to do this but no government stepped up to do their job. ALL communities living in an "urban/rural interface" has known this necessity ever since the building of communities in the mountainous regions of California and anywhere else in the west in the Rockies, where I live. It's human stupidity and incompetence on all levels that has let the Santa Anna Winds be singularly blamed for all of this hot mess. Life itself can be a dangerous undertaking at times, but when proper steps are taken to mitigate the danger, it's so much easier to live another day.
That’s: “Felon Trump is not king.”
We must remember to properly address him