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USFS decision to halt prescribed burns in California is history repeating
- MichaelZuo 2y agoThese types of articles never list the actual arguments that are supposed to convince congressmen to expend some of their finite political capital for committee battles… If it’s known to be at least partially political, then that would seem to be a pretty critical thing to know. Edit: And needed to gauge relative prospects versus everything else on the agenda…
- destitude 2y agoIsn't this like any other US government spending that is for prevention? From healthcare to environment the focus is never on prevention.
- MichaelZuo 2y agoWhy are you asking me? I’m not the expert on how the USG spending policies are decided… hence why I wrote the comment in the first place.
- exabrial 2y agoOur prescribed burns are not nearly aggressive enough... now this. Wow. In 2021, nearly half of RMNP burned down due to the lack of effective prescribed burns. I know the NPS/USFS are criminally underfunded, but losing these wonders is also a crime. Edited: us forest service
- ziddoap 2y ago>RMNP What is this? >NPS/NFS Is this National Forest Service? What does NPS stand for? Edit: Im not American, sorry for not knowing your acronyms.
- itake 2y agonational parks service maybe? https://www.nps.gov/index.htm https://www.nps.gov/index.htm
- 1123581321 2y agoRocky Mountain National Park, US Forest Service, National Parks Service
- wlesieutre 2y agoRocky Mountain National Park, National Park Service, National Forest Service
- planet36 2y agoRocky Mountain National Park
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Jtsummers 2y agoRMNP - Rocky Mountain National Park, about 266k acres. NPS - National Park Service. NFS - National Forest System? There is no National Forest Service, but there is the US Forest Service as referenced in the title.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Wooclurs 2y agoThis reads like a Fark title
- anon291 2y agoI'm no longer a resident of Caifornia, but California should use eminent domain to seize the forest land, or just burn it and ignore federal law. What are they possibly going to do?
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> What are they possibly going to do? What are or what could they do? The latter is basically the same as what would be done to you and me running out and torching federal forest. Jail.
- anon291 2y agoThey're going to jail the governor of California? Newsom has presidential ambitions and I can't imagine anything that would make him more popular and appeal to a substantial number of conservatives than defying federal law, risking jail, in order to literally save the state of California from fire. He'd be the greatest folk hero we've made in a long time. At some point politicians need to have some chutzpah.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> going to jail the governor of California? Probably not. But you would see Calfire agents being arrested. > some point politicians need to have some chutzpah I agree and also asked the question [1]. As a political stunt, it might work for the individual. But it would also set a precedent most Californian voters probably wouldn't appreciate when it comes to federal land in red states. To say nothing of basically every Californian wildfire funding battle in D.C. being ex ante conceded for a few years. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42047119 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42047119
- anon291 2y ago> most Californian voters probably wouldn't appreciate when it comes to federal land in red states Liberalism: the fear that someone, somewhere is doing something you disagree with. But thanks for saying the quiet part out loud. If we want to make progress as a nation we have to literally love ourselves (in this case, our lungs) more than we hate those we disagree with.
- parsimo2010 2y ago1. Bureaucrats choose to stop prescribed burns to ensure availability of staff and equipment to fight forest fires 2. Forest fires increase due to build up of flammable materials 3. Bureaucrats pat themselves on the back for their decision
- jncfhnb 2y ago3. Corrupt politicians point to underfunded government failures as evidence that we should privatize everything 4. Collect their paycheck as everything goes to shit
- dtquad 2y ago>privatize everything Maybe we should do like China and have multiple big state-owned enterprises in the same sectors competing against each other. The competitive forces stay without the intervening short-sighted interests of the ownership class. I wonder why this Chinese model is not included in discussions about government vs. privatization. Almost half of the Chinese economy is made up of SOEs competing against other SOEs. In some sectors that means the Chinese have multiple competing state-owned options to pick from while we in the "capitalist west" only have one state provided option.
- gruez 2y ago>Maybe we should do like China and have multiple big state-owned enterprises in the same sectors competing against each other. The competitive forces stay without the intervening short-sighted interests of the ownership class. Where's the incentive for the various SOEs to actually compete? At least in capitalism there's money on the line. When all the executives/board members are political appointees of the same party, things can get really chummy between "competitors".
- HarryHirsch 2y agoThings are pretty chummy in the supermarket space right now. Here is the price of ketchup: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WPU02440127 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WPU02440127, and there is no reason why the price should have gone up by 50 % between Summer 2021 and Summer 2023, the tomato harvest did not fail in that time. This is informal collusion between the large supermarket chains, enabled by a long tradition of lack of antitrust enforcement. If running a Chinese SOE well means a promotion in the party apparatus, then that would give some real competition, but US capitalism is delivering only for the billionaire class.
- darknavi 2y ago> This week, the U.S. Forest Service directed its employees in California to stop prescribed burning “for the foreseeable future,” a directive that officials said is meant to preserve staff and equipment to fight wildfires if needed. It sounds like it's a resourcing issue, not a change in philosophy. It doesn't change the fact that it won't be happening though.
- billjings 2y agoThe real philosophy is in the budget.
- culi 2y agoBad philosophy. Less prescribed burns mean more uncontrollable wildfires which means in the long term costs are even higher. Prescribed burns are expensive now because we haven't done them for so long. California banned the indigenous practice of cultural burns before it was even a state! But the more we work on restoring this practice the cheaper it'll be for everyone in the long term
- zo1 2y agoEnshittification strikes again. In this case, fees and costs go down by virtue of being pushed out into the future as even higher costs as a result of lack of fees being paid now. Someone should make an encyclopedia or reference doc detailing all the different and specific ways Enshittification manifests. Bonus points if they tie it into Socialism/Communism because I'd bet there is a high degree of overlap between the two in terms of failure modes.
- mistrial9 2y agoamazing mental gymnastics, describing how western-markets-failure-mode is directly tied to fictional-enemy-politics . More seriously, maybe systems on a large scale are susceptible? we see evidence of this here?
- valianteffort 2y agoWhy should CA budget to prevent forest fires when the federal government will just subsidize their natural disaster recovery?
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> Why should CA budget to prevent forest fires when the federal government will just subsidize their natural disaster recovery? We did just read the article about California spending money on fire mitigation while the federal government--the US part of the US Forest Service--skimps, right?
- Aloisius 2y agoWhat does this have to do with the CA budget? This is about the US Forest Service which manages Federal land. The Federal government owns and is responsible for rather large swaths of California forests.
- kibwen 2y agoI have good news, this is a problem that will eventually solve itself. Though I also have bad news if you happen to own property in rural CA...
- grogenaut 2y agoOr lungs anywhere in the US
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- prawn 2y agoThis always amazes me when visiting the US. I'm from a dry part of Australia where bushfires are a regular summer threat, but the smoke seems to dissipate quite quickly. In the US, I've driven more than once for a week across areas where the sky is thick from smoke coming from a fire 1-2 states away. And it's a fire that started weeks prior. It struck me last trip that an adversary so inclined could really sap lives, morale and resources from huge areas of the country by having rogue individuals secretly starting fires on top of regular lightning and firebug sources.
- rjrdi38dbbdb 2y agoIn forested areas, it really could become a new form of terrorism that's practically impossible to defend against.
- darknavi 2y agoJapan tried to do exactly that in WWII, albeit remotely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb
- shepherdjerred 2y ago
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago"scenario shows what happens when Congress is less committed than California to tackling forest management. With wildfire management funding constantly tied up in unpredictable budget debates, the current state-federal partnership is fragile and based on the whims of the legislative and executive branches, which can withhold funding based on which political party is currently in power. The Forest Service’s latest decision is the consequence of these issues" Would California have standing for damages? What would honestly be the consequences if the Governor and Legislature ordered Calfire to conduct controlled burns on federal land? (Can the Forest Service give Calfire permission to conduct burns on its land?)
- mistrial9 2y agoexcept none of that is accurate. After the 2017 Tubbs fire, Gov Gavin Newsom did real work and caused a new, binding agreement to be signed between the stakeholder agencies, State, local and Federal. IANAL but I did read the agreement announcement from the Governor's Office. Next, California terminated the employment of the life veteran CalFire Chief, passed a budget increase for CalFire that was ... 10x larger than it had ever had before (?) over time minus details... and set out to work on fires with multi-state partnerships for well-paid fire fighting groups from other states to work on emergency basis. And work they did .. subsequent years included massive fires that broke records, mostly 2018 and 2020. All the new money and agreements and on-call resources did ameliorate but did not prevent or even lessen, the massive catastrophic fire destruction. Now, in an election year, someone is definitely jockying for new agreements somehow, but who knows the details... maybe someone here?
- anon84873628 2y agoDid all of that allow them to do more prescribed burns?
- mistrial9 2y agoit appears that there was a policy statement called "Roadmap to a Million Acres" put out by USDA-USFS and the State of California
- readthenotes1 2y agoThis is like owning a house and stacking cordwood right next to it so all the termites can get in. If you own something you got to take care of it and if you don't want to take care of it you should get rid of it.
- 23B1 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle#Pournelle's_iron_law_of_bureaucracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle#Pournelle's_ir... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-licking_ice_cream_cone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-licking_ice_cream_cone
- legitster 2y agoThe US Forest Service used to deliver 12 billion board feet of lumber a year. The sale of this lumber helped fund the org and its mission. Environmental lawsuits from activists in the 90s drastically restricted the amount of logging being done on these lands and production dropped to a trickle. (The Biden administration increased the amount of logging in the last few years from a historic low. But the goal is still only to log up to 4 billion board feet next year.) While not a complete replacement for each other, prescribed burns are specifically more necessary now because of the lack of logging. And more importantly, these agencies are only collecting a fraction of the fees they once did to sustain their mission while having more unharvested forests to maintain.
- Retric 2y agoCA wildfires specifically have little to do with trees. The mix of wet and dry periods create a lot of extremely flammable material every year. Trees also play a roll, but it doesn’t take much vegetation to destroy a subdivision etc.
- rjrdi38dbbdb 2y agoProtecting the environment costs money, so I don't think it's a problem that the government should be adding funding to offset what was previously funded by logging.
- seadan83 2y agoCan you provide more evidence that logging suppressed the modern super fires? It strikes me as implausible and unrelated: - fire fighting costs is now exponentially more AFAIK - that revenue from the 90s might not have gone back to forests - while billions of log feet sounds a lot, it might not be - young forests burn, old forests are fire resistant. That logging creates young forests - logging requires access. Places inaccessible will still burn and still be a problem - fire breaks from logging only helps so much with santa anna style winds that blow embers very, very far - logging does not remove undergrowth, per the article it creates a ladder situation where tree tops will combust - old growth west coast forests are fire adapted and burns are necessary. Logging and suppression do not seem like the right solutions - conditions have changed since the 90s. Different rainfall patterns, different cycle of draughts, 30 more years of fire suppression and combustible materials, and 30 more years of (hyper fast) climate change (significant changes have occurred in that minuscule amount of time)
- thegrim33 2y agoSomewhat meta, but can someone explain what an organization like this CEPR .. actually is? I see these types all the time, they're the ones that produce various "studies" that are always get linked on HN. They usually have some generic name, some combination of various buzzwords, and their website is them displaying all the various "research" and "studies" they've produced. Their stated goal is apparently to just "promote democratic debate on the most important economic and social issues that affect people’s lives". How do they actually make money? They say they've got 33 staff members and 14 board members/advisors. Do they all work for free? Do they actually sell some product somewhere? I see nothing on their site where something is for sale or where you can hire them for anything. Are they supported by ads somewhere? All they seem to do is just spend year and year pumping out various "studies" and articles. Are there unknown backers paying them to produce this content?
- pessimizer 2y ago> Somewhat meta, but can someone explain what an organization like this CEPR .. actually is? It's a think tank. They generate good policy and good ways for politicians to explain that policy. > How do they actually make money? I've given them money. They've been around for a long time. I'm a big Dean Baker fan. > All they seem to do is just spend year and year pumping out various "studies" and articles. You say this as if it were a bad thing.
- mcsaucy 2y ago> How do they actually make money? They say they've got 33 staff members and 14 board members/advisors. Do they all work for free? Propublica's nonprofit explorer[1], and specifically the Form 990 filings[2], may be useful. [1]: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/522204029 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/522... [2]: from 2022 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/522204029/202333199349320463/full https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/522...
- waveBidder 2y agowow they're banking ~1/3 of their budget? that seems excessive.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- pwarnock 2y agoPrescribed burns don’t generate the fear to buy as many shiny new toys.
- clown_strike 2y agoStrikes me more as a quick way to subvert zoning laws and force new construction.
- jMyles 2y agoAs always happens in these threads - and for good reason - let's be sure to mention the book "Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California’s Natural Resources", by M. Kat Anderson. I learned about this book here on HN and it has transformed the way I think about this topic. I particularly recommend the superb audiobook. Through a series of interviews, this book makes the case the practice of basketweaving by indigenous people living in present-day California - and the massive and well-organized trade of hundreds of different types of baskets - is/was not merely a mechanism of subsistence, but actually a brilliant wildfire control strategy. Anderson and her many stunning interview subjects - indigenous people recalling the practices of grandparents and their siblings - make a compelling case that by encouraging the hundreds of different species which went into the creation of baskets to grow in certain places and not others, ancestors sculpted the landscape into one in which fires burned out in predictable patterns rather than scorching a significant portion of the continent.
- rjrdi38dbbdb 2y agoWas there any evidence that fire control was intentional or just a happy side effect of the basket weaving practice?
- leafmeal 2y agoThey used fire for much more than just promoting plant growth for baskets, I don't think OP did a very good job of explaining that. Fire was used to promote plant growth to encourage game, keep meadows open and clear to aide hunting, select for fire tolerant plants which native preferred, and even harvesting of grasshoppers. I'm sure the natives had some idea that frequent fires helped prevent more catastrophic burns, they would regularly schedule burns from every year to every few years depending on the landscape. But I doubt they could have predicted the kinds of catastrophic fires we've seen after decades and decades of severe fire suppression.
- Aloisius 2y agoEh. There's not much evidence that indigenous Californians were doing any kind of fire management in the California coniferous forests - which is largely what the US Forest Service manages and have been in the news for megafires. Indigenous Californians lived, overwhelmingly, in chaparral and grasslands near coastal areas and foothills rather far away. There is evidence that burns happened there (mostly burn scars in nearby coastal redwood forests, but also various written accounts by the Spanish). That said, an estimated 4.5-12% of California land burned annually prior to the Spanish getting here - so whatever wildfire management practices happened still resulted in far more land burning than today and months of smoke filled skies - which matches up with early written accounts.
- billclerico 2y agoProbably the most effective thing we could do is re-imagine Smokey Bear from a "put out your campfire" mascot to a spokesperson for effective forest management & prescribed fire.
- EdwardDiego 2y agoWhy not fund the local tribes to run it the burns? Kinda feel they have a lot more experience in this area.
- culi 2y agoNot just experience but desire. They're fighting for their right to take care of their land throughout most of California. The indigenous practice of cultural burns was banned before California was even officially a state. To many tribes, the practice was really important for generating staple foods like acorns so its banning was important to the overall strategy of mass genocide of native Californians
- amanaplanacanal 2y agoI bet a lot of that hands on knowledge is long gone now. The last people who actually did it were several generations ago.
- bbqfog 2y agoThat's not true. In fact they are still actively working with firefighters to teach traditional techniques: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe43QK85448 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe43QK85448
- EdwardDiego 2y agoI must say, I'm interested in why this ended up at -3, if anyone is keen to expand on their downvote for me - is it because you'd rather the state run it? Or because I suggested that the native people of California were better to run it?
- aurizon 2y agoYes, go back to primal forest as far as you can, then one dry hot year the country will burn flat? If we build houses in forested areas = that will happen. Home owners and insurers along with state/city must burden home owners with enforced brush/tree clearance laws. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_1922 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_1922
- marcus_holmes 2y agoIf the problem in California is anything like the problem in Australia, it's that it's not primal forest. We clearcut all the ancient tress, so what's left is secondary growth. The huge old trees cut out the light reaching the forest floor, so there was less underbrush to burn. It absolutely did burn, regularly, but did little damage because the fire never got hot enough to burn the trees. But with the secondary growth, it's vulnerable to fire. So we have to burn it often to clear the fuel load before it gets too much. But there's a lot of opposition to this kind of preventative burning, and then the fuel load builds up until we get a monster bush fire, everything burns down, and it all has to start again. We need about 100 years with no major bush fires, and no logging, to regenerate the first-growth forest that evolved here. But that's a major economic asset and the chances of it not being logged are tiny.
- jeifneioka 2y agoSlight tangent, USFS has been using outdated models for their prescribed burns, and burned as late as July in my area, right at the beginning of fire season and months away from any expected precipitation. This turned into a big wildfire in my area and they spent ~$100m putting it out. You may have been able to get away with burning during the summer in the 90's here, but not anymore. I'm not opposed to prescribed burns, either, I think they are totally necessary. But do them in the fall, when you've got nothing but rain and cool temperatures for the next 6 months, instead of weeks before the hottest and driest stretch of the year. As to why they burn in early summer, they said at a community meeting it's because it requires fewer people to manage the fire.
- Sn0wCoder 2y agoPrescribed burns do more than just burn up the dead wood to prevent forest fires. One of the other main goals is to kill invasive trees / plants while they are young. Doing burns in the fall after they have already spread their seeds for the next season would do nothing to prevent this. Another goal of spring burns is to stimulate the germination of specific tree species like the Giant Sequoia, Closed-cone coniferous, and some berry trees (maybe others). Most prescribed burns are done in early to late spring, not sure about summer burns. If the only goal is to prevent forest fires, then in theory you could just send a hoard of people in to gather up all the dead wood at the end of each season, pile it up and have some nice fall bonfires, which might be fun. The main issue is the terrain harsh and would be very time-consuming.
- seadan83 2y agoTo your last paragraph - it's not just dead wood that is the issue - right? In CA, there is a lot of shrubbery that turns brown and grasses. Second, (west coast) forests that have not burned in a while look like a big brick of plant matter. Mostly living, dense, from ground to 30 feet high of plant matter that will combust when it is dry, windy, and a fire that is plenty hot to even burn the roots several feet deep.
- Sn0wCoder 2y ago
- ghufran_syed 2y ago[flagged]
- tlogan 2y agoCalifornia likely won’t address the issue independently, as those most affected by forest fires often lean Republican, leaving little political incentive. Meanwhile, federal intervention seems unlikely since California’s electoral outcome is consistently Democratic, reducing any strategic motivation for federal support. The result? Despite urgent needs, little action is taken on either side.
- kzs0 2y agoDisagreed, the smoke impact alone affects huge swaths of high density (and deep blue) regions like the Bay Area. Additionally, controlled burns are most necessary in areas near density like the counties ringing the bay (that are still quite blue).
- seadan83 2y agoNot enforcing federal law is different from violating federal law. Marijuana legalization is more gray. ICE for sure is active even in so called sanctuary cities.
- psychlops 2y agoAren't wildfires a natural part of the ecosystem in CA?
- calibas 2y agoYep, they've always happened. The Summers are very dry and hot, then the thunderstorms come... There's a number of plants that have actually evolved to take advantage of the fires.
- seadan83 2y agoYes! Necessary for a number of trees to reproduce. Morelle mushrooms are another example, their spores are fire activated. Look fo them in burn areas the following spring. West coast trees evolved to drop their lower branches. They naturally won't have branches for 20 to 40 feet off the ground. They need to grow old enough to do that. Most forests have already been chopped down a few times over though in the last 150 years.
- waveBidder 2y agoThe ecosystem managed by indigenous peoples through proscribed burns, yes. Nowhere humans have lived escaped humans altering the ecosystem to serve our needs.
- chrisbrandow 2y agofrustrating. I have sympathy for them, b/c it is actually a catch-22. one rogue prescribed burn can cost millions and millions. meanwhile forests keep burning in unplanned ways.
- datadrivenangel 2y agoTechnically a risk-asymmetry / dilemma, not a catch-22, which is when to take some action you need to have already completed the action.
- anymouse123456 2y agoIt's wild that we can't afford to solve the root problem because we're spending too much time and money literally fighting actual forest fires.
- silexia 2y agoThe government has over and over again proven itself totally incompetent at managing public forests. These should be sold to private owners who actually care for them.
- seadan83 2y agoMost private owners are tree farms, right? Those burn like crazy. I've seen very few well managed tree farms, they do exist. Anecdotally, after observing several thousand linear miles of west coast forest, just a handful were well managed and fire resistant. The majority is a dense mass of q-tip like trees with dense underbrush. There in grows not trees, but tree trunks and the habitat is good for rats and no large game. (Sorry for the rant, I've got strong feelings on how gross tree farms are. To see how peevelant they are - check satellite images. It looks like a checkerboard, it is not due to images being stitched together, it is the boundaries of clear cuts and tree farms- and it is just everywhere (west coast))
- toofy 2y agoYou may have accidentally fallen prey to timber baron misinformation. It just isnt true that private owners "actually care for them" in some way that prevents fires. [0][1][2][3] And even if it were true, lets pretend we give all of the forests to timber barons--then we get to 1) still fight the fires anyway, and 2) we'd end up having to bail the timber barons out after the fires. The end state is more burned forests that we now dont own, or get to use, or have any say over, yet, we still pay for it all and the billionaires walk away with everything. At this point we know they wouldn't care for the forests any more than the forest service. [0] https://news.oregonstate.edu/news/osu-research-suggests-forest-service-lands-not-main-source-wildfires-affecting-communities https://news.oregonstate.edu/news/osu-research-suggests-fore... > OSU research suggests Forest Service lands not the main source of wildfires affecting communities --- [1] https://www.propublica.org/article/despite-what-the-logging-industry-says-cutting-down-trees-isnt-stopping-catastrophic-wildfires https://www.propublica.org/article/despite-what-the-logging-... > For decades, Oregon’s timber industry has promoted the idea that private, logged lands are less prone to wildfires. The problem? Science doesn’t support that. --- [2] https://missoulacurrent.com/study-wildfires-land/ https://missoulacurrent.com/study-wildfires-land/ > Study: Most destructive wildfires have started on private land --- [3] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-06002-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-06002-3 > Human ignitions on private lands drive USFS cross-boundary wildfire transmission and community impacts in the western US
- princearthur 2y agoCalifornia is in the middle of a huge fire insurance crisis. It started with the intentional housing supply restrictions that drove up property prices and rents. In suburban areas, rebuilding costs were mostly increased indirectly through higher wages (as tradespeople and laborers have to make rent.) This sent insurance rates through the roof and caused a wave of policy cancellations. Many insurance companies exited the market altogether [1]. Climate change is also to blame. The firestorms of 2017, 2018 and 2020 broke all records, and were insanely expensive to rebuild after. The typical trigger is a katabatic wind event [2] after a long dry spell. This massively reduces relative humidity (often to 5-10%,) making ignition much easier. Once a fire starts, the wind spreads it extremely quickly. Sustained wind speeds of 50-60mph are not uncommon near mountain peaks. In 2017/2018/2020, the precipitating events were so intense that the initial responses focused exclusively on helping the residents out. By the time the actual firefighting began, the fires were already enormous. It's surprising to me that we haven't seriously looked into large-scale sprinkler systems, such as this one deployed in Spain [3]. These could take a major bite out of the initial uncontrolled stage. They could either be deployed in the wild along naturally defensible lines, or at the perimeters of inhabited areas. They're expensive upfront, but not as expensive as the alternative. They might also reduce the need for prescribed burns. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/10/home-insurance-park-wildfire-california-butte-county https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/10/home... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katabatic_wind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katabatic_wind [3] https://www.wired.com/story/spanish-wildfire-defenses/ https://www.wired.com/story/spanish-wildfire-defenses/
- devoutsalsa 2y agoI remember the smoke hovering over San Francisco, CA during the fires in late 2018. It was the worst I've personally experienced. I had an office job at the time. At the end of the day I didn't want to walk home in such poor air quality, so I ordered an Uber. The driver had been driving in that smoke all day and it caught up with him. Halfway to my home, he opened the door, puked his guts out, canceled ride, ended his shift, and I ended up walking the rest of the way.
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- Kim_Bruning 2y agoI'm very confused by this. An ounce of prevention is worth pound of cure. But now they're doing away with the prevention... to be able to afford the cure instead (which they are now likely guaranteed to need more of)? I'm genuinely confused and trying to figure out the logic. Is this a california/usa political kind of thing?
- nyeah 2y agoApparently nobody wants to talk about that.
- anon84873628 2y agoThey're so backlogged on the prevention that the need for a cure is 100% of all available resources. This is a "US Federal Government" thing. The funding for this department is decided fairly short term, so it is a political thing dependent on the current government, especially how it feels about California, climate change, etc.
- bell-cot 2y ago> An ounce of prevention... However idiotic it may be - people are far more willing to pay $$$$$ to have a broken leg treated than they are willing to pay $ for salt or sand to put on their icy sidewalk.
- playingalong 2y agoShouldn't the govs and laws be immune to this?
- hedora 2y agoNo one gets reelected for avoiding a crisis. For example, Trump’s running on blaming the next guy for problems that he created as president. Similarly, when Arnold was governor he bought a fleet of mobile hospitals that could have been used for covid. They were scrapped by the democrats the second he was voted out, and that mistake has had zero political repercussions.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- torlok 2y agoIt never ceases to amaze me that a country with such abundant natural resources, the largest economy in the world, and a massive military budget, doesn't have the resources to deal with these existential issues.
- amanaplanacanal 2y agoThe forest service can only spend what Congress authorizes. And Congress is kind of a shit show, more so the last decade.
- msabalau 2y agoMinor note: as a percentage of GDP, the US military budget under both Biden and Trump is/was significantly lower than the post cold war "peace dividend" years under Bill Clinton. If we are not doing prescribed burns or, say, schools need to hold bake sales, it is because Congress just isn't choosing to spend money on those priorities, not that the massive military budget is making this impossible.
- torlok 2y agoThat's exactly what I meant. The money's right there.
- mensetmanusman 2y agoCalifornia’s state budget is higher than the gdp of Finland. You would think this would be high up on the list of hiring competent people to manage this part of CA life.
- returningfory2 2y agoThis comparison doesn't make any sense? California is 7 times bigger than Finland.
- jjcm 2y agoIt's worth noting that 47.7% of land in California is federal land. There is an expectation that the federal government take care of it in return for the restrictions imposed.
- dzannetandreevn 2y ago[dead]