California Wildfires and Trump Wildfires
It takes a whole news organization, or all news organizations, to cover all of the crazy statements of the Dissembler in Chief. I certainly will not spend time on it. Unless, of course, it applies to California, and involves taking funds from the State. Especially if it involves protecting our towns from annihilation by wildfires.
Very tragically, the whole town of Paradise has been wiped out, and 25 lives have been lost.
Trump said that we had better manage our forests better, or he would withdraw federal funds. Of course we should manage our forests better. But how much of the responsibility is actually the President’s himself, considering that he is responsible for the National Forests?
We don’t know who Trump has talked to to give out the tweet level advice, and threat. Was it to a lumber company buddy or lobbying organization who just wants unlimited logging rights, with no restrictions, and exploitation of all national forests? Was it to Secretary of the Interior Zinke, who is actually all of the above? Was it to a wildfire climate scientist like we have at UCI? That’s a NO for sure.
The University of California Forest Research and Outreach site at ucanr.edu has many descriptions and links to sites for forest, environmental and climate change information.
A lot of the fire areas surrounding communities in the Southland are just brush, and of no logging relevance. Even the logging companies have reduced output by 25%, since it is getting too expensive. A lot of people are using artificial wood that is partially waterproof and fireproof, and impermeable to termites.
Trump has failed before in denying federal funds to States which has been allocated by the Congress.
Now for the data. There are 33 million acres of forest in California. Of these, 19 million acres, or 57%, are managed by federal agencies, including the USDA Forest Service, the USDI Bureau of Land Management, and the National Park Service. Then, 40% of California’s forest land (13 million acres) is owned by families, Native American Tribes, or companies. Of this, 5 million acres or 14% is owned by industrial timber companies. 9 million acres are owned by individuals, with nearly 90% of them having less than 50 acres. It sounds like less than 3% can be owned by the State of California.
By the way, California always gets a smaller percentage of what it pays in federal taxes than many other states. The Trump rich man’s tax cuts have also dug further into Californian’s pockets by limiting our tax deductions on our expensive real estate.
So Donald, you as President, owner and manager of national forests, your lumber companies, and your private property owners, all of whom you support, are those that are responsible for forest management, and those you will be taking much needed and already insufficient funds from!
We can’t fail to mention that wildfires occur because brush and chaparral get dried out with droughts and with rising temperatures caused by global warning, The trees are killed by pine bark beetles which can invade them if there is not a week of freezing weather to kill them during the winter. Trees are also just killed by drought itself. There is nowhere near the amount of money that would be needed to remove the vast number of these dead trees.
Not only does President No-Blame kill all clean energy programs at the Federal level, but he tries to cancel all such programs and waivers at the State level. Climate change will only lead to more wildfires and more destructive ones in the future.
Instead of showing up with FEMA and Federal Aid to his Republican states, he sends blames and threats of cuts to our Democratic state. But Trump may well have to deal with California’s Nancy Pelosi as House Majority Leader, or at least with California’s largest House delegation of a massive 43 seats, which is 10% of the House.
