California repeatedly warned about spiking gas prices, fragile supply. But fixes never came. The problem deepened. And now California is looking at yet more troubles: a potentially devastating wildfire, and now rolling blackouts.
The first of two massive forest fires has burned through the massive Central and Southern California forests in the last week. At least two people died, and thousands have been evacuated.
The second fire, which is about a third larger than the first, continues to burn at least 2,000 acres a day.
What’s causing the fires? Is this a climate crisis, or is it natural?
California is facing a natural disaster of historic proportions.
But it’s not just any natural disaster that California is facing. This is the type of disaster that environmentalists warned us was only a matter of time. The latest problem — that’s what’s going to knock California off a year’s worth of economic growth.
If we don’t get serious about the solution, I won’t be surprised if we find out it is an artificial one cooked up in Washington D.C. to give the state’s electric utilities a free pass to dig up more coal, gas, and oil and release it back to the market in order to power the nation’s economy.
What ails California
California is facing the real possibility that its economy will be crippled for at least a year without the natural resources that keep it from being hobbled economically.
It’s the same problem we’re facing in many other states: a growing economic problem but an antiquated, outmoded way of dealing with it.
In order to get the economy back on track, we need to get creative, and soon.
We need to use less electricity, not more. We need to build our economy with renewable energy, not dirty, expensive, non-renewable hydrocarbon energy. We need to build more housing and grow our food, not more fossil fuel.
We need to get more people off government assistance and onto private assistance (with the exception of those people using cars), with the goal of using all the money we save to go live on Earth