Written by Thomas Geiser
The wildfires in California have been a public safety crisis for years. However, Democrats seem to have little interest in actually solving this problem. Alarmism and over-regulation by the state government have prevented the passage of legislation that could prove instrumental in stopping these wildfires before they begin and mitigating them once they do.
This fear and passiveness from Democrats in California has put our state in a position where it can only react to wildfires, instead of preventing them in the first place. Solutions to the wildfire problem do exist, but the fear-mongering in the state capital has stymied productive debate on the topic.
A recent Stanford study has shown that these destructive wildfires could be prevented through the use of controlled burns to clear out potential wildfire fuel. The issue is that these burns have been stigmatized by aggressive legislation that says if the burn gets out of control then it’s the responsibility of the person who set the fire. Landowners are terrified of being held liable, so instead they allow ground fuel to accumulate on their property, providing fuel for future wildfires.
The real issue here is a lack of training for controlled burns. If these landowners were properly schooled on how to handle controlled burns and if the state relaxed the penalties for landowners should the burn grow out of control, then it could make a huge difference in the future. Right now, state spending is focused on handling wildfires once they have already been started by hiring seasonal volunteer firefighters, but if that money were put towards prevention measures like controlled burns it would be much more effective in terms of cost and damage limitation.
Every time there’s a wildfire in California, Democrats panic over climate change and how humans are destroying the environment. But when they are offered solutions to the problem they still resist because of the potential environmental impact. They cannot complain about the results when they will not support solutions, particularly those rooted in scientific evidence.
They ignore studies like this one from Stanford because Democratic politicians only care about science when it supports their pre-existing views. Their narrow-mindedness will bring disaster to California as long as they refuse to pass legislation for wildfire prevention. How long will Democrats allow California to suffer before they take action?
