Rich and famous people are being affected, the time has come to do something about it
Shit I'll take it at this point.
But billionaires weren't really affected, so I still doubt it.
There's 2 missing adaptation policies.
Deforestation around homes replaced with solar. Maybe fruit bushes under solar panels to help against mudslides. Rebuilding homes with metal roofs and solar to make them fireproof. Deforesting is easier insurance management than retrofitting homes.
Utilities owning CA government to stop home and community solar has to stop. Home+community solar replacing forests is an alternative to fire risks from transmission lines, and charging rate payers instead of shareholders whenever they cause a fire.
Solar not only provides economic value instead of just costs, it helps with both long term path to 3C, and insurance/government burden to property survivability. Solar energy is more decarbonization than trees.
No, no, didn't you hear? It's all one guy's fault. Nobody knows how or why, but Trump would never lie. It's all Newsom's fault.
Unless it's your house that is burning down because of unusually hot dry weather ... no one really cares or wants to admit that it has anything to do with climate change.
This is a narrative created by the incumbent Fossil Fuel industry.
In reality, everyone is either directly or indirectly affected by the fires and everyone benefits from reducing climate change change.
The Renewable and related industries will be much better for the economy and capitalism.
I fail to understand why they stick with fossil fuels even though renewable deployments are cheaper than ever. Although there's misinformation and politics, they should look at long term profits..
If you depend on oil companies for "rationality":
That cheapest new energy is solar then wind gives the oil company a negative impact on its existing assets. Suppressing renewables through bribery/politics keeps consumers addicted to their product, and keeps prices high. Nationalizing oil companies, without compensation for shareholders, is both appropriate punishment, and only way to stop their lobbying corrupting democracy.
Sunk cost fallacy. They have already invested so much in fossil fuel infrastructure that they feel that if they give up now, they would have wasted all their money.
The fact that that the money is wasted whether they pivot to renewables or not something they consider. In fact, if they can lever their existing infrastructure they can be much more competitive than any new renewable energy provider.
Many fossil fuel companies, especially ones involved in the middle east petrostates gain huge oil rent from selling oil.
Basically, the price of oil is close to the price of producing it in the "marginal" fields (the least productive fields), while some oil fields are many times more productive than the marginal fields. The owners of the hyper productive fields gain huge amounts of revenue from selling oil (this is called "differential rent" in economics). And this profit comes from owning the oil fields themselves.
If the demand for oil were to fall, its price would fall quite rapidly, as oil producers would abandon low productivity marginal fields. This would torpedo the oil rents of the petro states
This rent effect exists for lots of goods, but it is more pronounced in oil because oil is a scarce natural resource that is spread very unevenly.
On the political side of things, the oil rent of the big producers is protected by the US government, because the oil rent of the big producers is what holds up the value of the USD.
Unfortunately, I have to second this statement. I think humans just can’t anticipate well. In combination with money, a rare event will be neglected or ignored. Think of IT security or pandemic countermeasures for example.
I live in Germany. Europes devil is water. Lots of water from the sky. Rain the volume of an entire year within 2-3 days.
In 2021, in a hilly area many small villages were washed away from a used to be small tiny river. Did people learn? No.
Since that event, we had several more heavy rain events in Europe that either flushed town or drowned entire areas. Last one this summer in Spain Castillia.
Do people learn? No, still the right-wing parties in Germany are on upswings. And so the Governments.
Tldr. Most people are stupid
Kremlin propaganda (in various ways, sometimes in free natural gaz) isn't to be forgotten.
I think the fires show the need for water in LA
Climate realism without questioning the "sanctity" of the free market that is the basis of the capitalist production system that is debunking nature for profits is useless. We must absorb the abundance of capitalist production but overcome it as an economic model, to a model in which man is at the center and not profit. Without the overcoming of Capitalism, everything is mere words in the wind
It’s not a free market. There are way too many subsidies for that!
The most tractable and obvious way to reduce California wildfire risk in the future is not to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, which are a tiny and dwindling component of future global emissions this century.
"realism"
They just need to not allow any insurance cancelations on policies paid up and only rebuild not fire resistant homes, cement, metal roofs are a most, metal shutters on all windows.
The reason why a lot of California homes are built with lumber is that more fire resistant materials like bricks and cement collapse during earthquakes.
Other earthquake regions in the world build their houses with concrete and cement as well. It‘s possible.
However, structures that are resistant against fire and earthquake might be costly.
There's not a single thread about this fire where some Californians have excuses for why they simply can't have their entire state burn to a crisp year after year. They really on that brainwash shit
And cap insurance profits & executive compensation instead of premiums. A cap on premiums makes insurance non-viable even for a non-profit if the risk is too high, while a cap in profits lets it be valued appropriately. The cap on executive compensation is needed because without that they'd raise premiums excessively & pay themselves the extra instead of accumulating that as company profit for their stock price.
People need to start having realistic conversations why they are building homes in places prone to natural disasters climate change or not.
Why is there a need for people I live in beach condos that require all that extra maintenance and are hurricane path?
Why build them near areas know for wild fires?
They over build these dangerous areas and now being checked by nature. There is a probably a reason why these areas were not settled that's much until modern tech allowed people to brute force into them.
You can still build in wildfire zones as long as you don't clad your house in tinder. Which I'm guessing is the bulk of the homes that burned. Roofs in particular are the major source of catching embers because it's all flammable material. Make every house have metal roofs and fire resistant siding and this level of destruction is far less likely
Why metal?
Just use clay, it doesn't conduct heat as easily and makes for great isolation:
Plus it should be far quieter when it rains/hails.
Metal, clay, concrete, whatever. As long as it isn't the default combustible shingles made of an oil by-product.
Asphalt shingles account for most residential roofing demand with 81% of the overall market in 2023, according to a new report by The Freedonia Group.
Any fire prone area that puts petroleum based anything on 80% of its buildings roofs is flirting with devastation like this. Hopefully we can learn something out the other side and mandate noncombustible roofing from here on out.