Dems’ Climate Agenda and DEI Virtue Signals Prove Devastating

Source: Patriot Post | VIEW ORIGINAL POST ==>

Predictably, leftists are blaming their favorite bogeyman of climate change for the wildfires now wreaking destruction in Los Angeles. It’s almost all they know how to do.

Case in point, Massachusetts Democrat Senator Ed Markey ranted not about the incompetence on display in California but about his opposition to Donald Trump’s pro-fossil fuel energy policies. “Trump has been bought for $1 billion by Big Oil,” Markey posted on X. “Just a payoff to kill the IRA and the Green New Deal. We know what will happen. More fires, more climate disasters, more death. The LA fires are a preview of coming atrocities.”

What an optimistic view for the future.

Yet, ironically, the issue that Markey conveniently avoids is the fact that these fires are taking place in California, which, last time we checked, is virtually a one-party state controlled by Democrats. Indeed, the last time Republicans controlled the governorship and the legislature was back in 1970. Since then, Democrats have held a near continuous majority in the legislature and four out of the last seven governorships.

Over those decades, California has become infamous for its focus on leftist and particularly increasingly extreme environmentalist policies. Furthermore, Hollywood and its celebrities have been at the forefront, advocating for and cheering on these radical and extremist policies.

Indeed, it would appear that in Hollywood, virtue signaling is how one is virtuous.

This is epitomized by the Los Angeles Fire Department leadership. Kristin Crowley, who rose to the position of LAFD chief in March 2022, was heralded as not only the city’s first female chief but also for being an open lesbian. Crowley’s second in command, also a lesbian, has gotten herself in hot water for a video in which she told a hypothetical concerned citizen who asked if she could carry her husband out of a burning building that “he got himself in the wrong place if I have to carry him out of a fire.”

Yet, until these fires, Hollywood celebrities were patting themselves on the back for being so inclusive and diverse because DEI is the best way to fight fires — except when it comes to actually fighting fires.

However, to be fair, it’s not the LAFD’s DEI leadership that is to blame for LA burning. Much of the blame lies with a long list of decisions California’s Democrat leaders made in service of the climate cult. Whether it be the fact that no new reservoirs have been built in California since the 1970s or the decision to let rainwater run into the ocean rather than capture it, the common factor is some rather dubious environmental concern.

What has long been a common occurrence in Southern California is the dry season and the Santa Ana winds. This cannot be attributed to climate change, and yet that is exactly the all-purpose scapegoat explanation that leftist politicians offer when seeking to justify expansive government programs and when faced with the negative results of their own policies.

In this case, climate alarmists blame two wet winters for the fires. The additional rain caused more vegetation to grow, which then caught fire when it dried out. Leftists even have a fancy name for this weather phenomenon: “hydroclimate whiplash.”

Regardless of whether this theory has any merit, most wildfires aren’t caused by climate change. In fact, 95% of California’s wildfires are caused by people. In that sense, it is man-made.

Further complicating the problem is California’s budget woes. To tackle a growing state debt last year, Newsom signed into law a budget that included a $101 million funding cut to the state’s fire prevention service. To be fair, over the prior decade, the state had increased the state’s fire prevention budget up to $3 billion in 2024. Given the current situation, however, it’s a good bet that Newsom and company wished they had not slashed spending on fires.

Finally, there is the growing price tag for this devastation, which is now estimated to come in anywhere from $200 to $300 billion, making it the most costly in California history. And all this devastation could have been avoided had California not pursued a woke climate cultist agenda.

As the great historian and Central Valley farmer Victor Davis Hanson put it, “Anytime an ideology trumps empiricism, meritocracy, investigatory efforts, just disinterested inquiry and knowledge, then you’re going to have a disaster.”