By now, I’m sure everyone knows that California is on fire, and current estimates put the damage at north of $150 billion.
It isn’t completely clear, though, that ultimately, this came about from government, and specifically, government that legislated with the “good” intention of protecting the environment and dealing blows to the wretched causes of global warming.
The California legislature felt it necessary to protect a tiny fish called the delta smelt, so it created laws to limit water use. The state also felt that the sex life of the spotted owl was sacrosanct, so laws were passed that essentially ended any sensible forest management, which would upset the birds and ruin the mood. Or something.
Because of this “management,” the fires are raging out of control, for those reasons and for a few others.
Of those other reasons, the most egregious is that the firefighters have no water. The most necessary item in fighting fires, water was unavailable, with hydrants pushing out only air. This as well was the result of supposed good intentions: the voters of the state had voted for a tax increase to pay for reservoirs to hold water for the state’s population and whatever it needed it for.
Yet, of the billions — yes, that’s with a B — that have been collected, no water is being stored, and people are putting out fires with buckets.
Why a government felt it was necessary to legislate the weather, the water flow, raptor reproduction and every other thing is as unexplainable and it was unnecessary. It also was a complete failure in the long run.
Intention alone doesn’t keep fires from happening. What does is proper planning and foresight, both of which were seemingly absent here. The long-term effects of this overreach only benefitted fish and fowl, but put people in grave danger. (It’s interesting to note that because of this mismanagement, and decades of fires, most insurance companies no longer offer fire insurance in California. There is a state “fund” that has been set up, but that’s a boondoggle of another stripe.)
The idea behind the federal and state governments is to represent the needs of the people. Implied in that is that the people speak, the governments — federal and state — respond properly, such as when the people voted for reservoirs to hold precious water.
When a government decides that it knows better what the people want, and bulldozes the paths to achieve those ends, it ceases to be a democratic republic and instead becomes a tyranny. To my mind, a tyranny based on good intentions is the worst kind of tyranny there is, because of how it is sold.
The other problem here is that regardless of how disastrous policy becomes, there will be no accountability, regardless of how much blame is being spread around.
The only people that really need to tell me what to do are me and my parents; in both those cases, the end results — good or bad — fall where they need to, and not on the population of an entire state.
<i>Tony Farkas is editor of the Trinity County News-Standard and the San Jacinto News-Times.</i>