[Update: SCOTUS didn’t stop the sentencing. Trump will be sentenced tomorrow for the convictions in the “hush money” case.]
[Another update: MSNBC is reporting that the 11th Circuit court says the Jack Smith report can be released, but after a three-day delay to allow for appeals. It’s not clear to me if this ruling applies equally to the J6 and documents reports.]
This is one of those days I wonder if our species will last another century. Predictably, the Right is turning the California fires into partisan talking points based on lies.
Philip Bump at WaPo writes that falsehoods around the L.A. fires are proliferating on the right. The subhead is, “Anything to keep the realities of climate change from spreading.” Please do read this; no paywall. Led by Donald Trump, it’s already a hardwired narrative on the Right that flames are consuming neighborhoods because of Democrats and DEI hires. If only White Republican men were running California, I take it, none of this would have happened.
Here’s just a sample:
We should begin by noting that most of the criticisms — about the hydrants or water diversion or the LAFD itself — have nothing to do with why the fires erupted and spread so quickly. Instead, hurricane-force Santa Ana winds quickly spread small fires across areas that were unusually dry. Wildfires have long been a challenge in California; what’s unfolding in Los Angeles is an overlap of factors that increase the risks of wildfires spreading.
So when actor James Woods, a prominent voice on right-wing social media, declares that the fires are because of “liberal idiots like Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass,” saying one of them “doesn’t understand the first thing about fire management and the other can’t fill the water reservoirs,” he is incorrect. For example — and in contrast to Trump’s claim about diverting water from Northern California that was aimed at agriculture, not firefighting — reservoirs in Southern California are at or above historic levels. That’s good news for firefighting aircraft that need the water to douse flames, except that those high winds prevented them from flying for several hours.
And, of course, all the screeching about DEI is based on the assumption “that non-White hires are necessarily less competent,” and this is accepted on the Right as gospel.
I took a look at one Right-wing site. At Hot Air, a person named Duane Patterson writes under a painfully ironic headline, “Lessons, Painful At Times, Are Only Lessons If They’re Eventually Learned.” And, of course, there is no clear “lesson” presented in the article, just the usual grievances. This disaster is entirely the fault of “Democratic leadership,” who somehow should have been able to slow down the wind and make the rain fall. More water should have been available, Patterson writes, except as Philip Bump told us, a lack of water in reservoirs wasn’t the problem. And it’s also the fault of homeless people — arson is suggested — and DEI hires. The usual blah blah blah.
What isn’t the problem is climate change. Climate change is mentioned twice, in both cases to dismiss it as just a stupid excuse. Here’s one mention:
Insurance companies pulled out of the L.A. basin years ago because state regulators would not allow them to adjust their rates to cover the increased exposure risk that was growing along with all the undergrowth and brush in the hills that the state refused to cut back. Insurance companies knew trouble was coming. Everyone honestly knew this day would eventually come, but Gavin Newsom would love for you to believe it’s climate change’s fault and just one of those things that’s unavoidable.
Climate change is not “unavoidable” if we can accept that it’s happening and take steps to slow it down, but let’s go on … The part about insurance is mostly true; the state would not let insurance companies raise their rates to cover their increased exposure to wildfire risk.
But how many homeowners would have found the rates too high? And remember that the Republican-run state of Florida has a similar problem; insurance companies are packing up and leaving because the increased risk of hurricanes makes insuring Florida homes too risky. All those White Republican manly men who run Florida don’t seem to have an answer for that, either. California at least offers a home insurance plan of last resort for people who can’t get other coverage, which I’m pretty sure is more than Florida has done. Do correct me if I’m wrong.
As far as forest management is concerned, I’m going to assume California could do better than it has. But I found this article about a 2023 UCLA study that says, in brief, it’s complicated.
While some political leaders have argued that governmental overprotection of forests has been the primary cause of worsening fires, the reality is more nuanced. Increased logging and clearing trees may help in some locations. But in other places, evidence suggests it can lead to worse fires. For instance, opening the tree canopy allows sunlight to dry vegetation, MacDonald said, increasing the amount of dry plant matter that feeds wildfires.
And you’re going to need a huge number of people to do all the brush clearing and leaf raking the Right suggests. Who you gonna hire (if not migrants)?
The paper also calls for more regulation (watch the Righties get the vapors) regarding where and how housing developments can be built. But in the end, hotter weather, a dryer climate, and stronger winds will still be with us.
Oh, and here’s the other mention of climate change in the Hot Air article:
If there is one thing Newsom is competent at, it’s playing the blame game. There’s truly no one finer. It’s always someone else’s fault, or it’s climate change’s fault – any number of outlets for passing the buck when disaster strikes.
Like I said, climate change is just dismissed as a stupid excuse. No lessons learned here.
This goes back at least to Ronald Reagan’s taking Jimmy Carter’s solar panels off the White House roof. The implication was that alternative energy is for wimps. Manly men and their supportive women must drill baby drill. Loyalty to fossil fuels is now deeply embedded in hard-Right tribal identity, to the point that no right-thinking Rightie would ever even momentarily entertain the notion that climate change is happening and fossil fuels might be a problem. Their minds are closed and locked up tight. They have been well trained to react to any mention of climate change with derision and denial, and I don’t see that changing.
So, no lessons will be learned, as long as Donald Trump and his cult have anything to say about it.
See also Philip Bump’s column from yesterday, No windmills, more rakes: Trump’s archaic climate politics return. Trump, who no doubt has never so much as raked a leaf or mowed a lawn in his life, is certain that we just need more leaf-raking a brush clearing. For that matter, I wonder if Trump has ever walked in a real, natural forest? He’s a New York City boy, you know.
Bump begins,
The mechanism for climate change is by now well established. Gases like carbon dioxide and methane sit in Earth’s atmosphere and absorb heat rising from the planet instead of allowing the heat to escape into space. Some of that absorbed heat is, instead, redirected back down to the Earth’s surface. Because we’ve dumped so much of those gases into the atmosphere — largely by burning oil, coal and gas — more heat is retained.
The planet gets hotter. The oceans get hotter and expand. The air gets hotter and holds more moisture. The land gets hotter and dries out. We get rising sea levels and bigger storms and worse droughts. 2024 will almost certainly be Earth’s hottest year on record, seizing the title from the previous hottest year … 2023.
But no, that can’t be true, says the Right. We just need to put manly Republican White men in charge, and rake more leaves, or something.
