Rather than prepare for the state’s extreme (but unfortunately predictable) weather variations, elected officials in the Golden State have chosen to ignore tried and true fire-prevention policies. The results are now painfully apparent as at least 24 people have died, hundreds of thousands of people are displaced, and property damage estimates are soaring into the tens of billions of dollars.
“Extreme but predictable weather variations” isn’t the message you hear in the media. Instead, many assert that the fires in Los Angeles are directly attributed to climate change. To choose just one high-profile example: CNN’s Brianna Keilar interviewed the famous climate scientist Michael Mann, who argued that these fires are “definitely related to a trend of drier conditions in California and the western U.S. caused by human-caused warming, due primarily to the burning of…
