The Evolution Of Life

The California Fires: Wake-Up Call on Climate Change and Development

The Los Angeles fires reveal several problems, the first being the failure to anticipate the effects of climate change by politicians. Well intended political actions to artificially reduce the cost of insurance in high-risk areas have encouraged development which never should have occurred. The cost to cover policies in these areas was not based on risk, but political wants. The risk offset was covered by the state and broad increases to insurance policies in general.

Everyone in California will pay for this disaster through their taxes and insurance policies. That’s just the monetary loss. There is also the loss of life and destruction of natural habitat. If the fires were caused by electrical lines then that can also be tied to development and encroachment on natural habitats.

It also seems evident to me that fire prevention experts would never allow a residential invasion in this high-risk area today without adequate egress and ingress. Residents were trapped in a bottleneck in the race to escape.

There are many things that need to change to prevent such tragedies from being so severe. Construction code changes to require ‘fire hardening’ of new construction. Changes in the law to allow insurance companies to use risk factors to set rates. Understandably this would render many natural areas in California off limits to construction. It would also return some locations to their natural habitat. Environmentally that would be a positive outcome.

Of course, the ultimate solution is to seriously address climate change and weather disruption. The severity of the firestorm and convergence of events is the result of global warming. We have yet to seriously address global warming. There are many powerful economic forces united against needed changes. Our past experience with corporate interests should be a harbinger of what’s to come combating climate change. We only need to look to big oil and the auto industry and their efforts to resist the removal of lead from gasoline, or the tobacco industry in their ongoing efforts to perpetuate and increase the use of tobacco products despite their well-established disastrous health effects. The pharmaceutical industry promoted the excessive use of oxycodone knowing the drugs strong addictive quality and resulting and continuing destruction of human life.

So much needs to change on a global scale that I am pessimistic we will make needed changes in time to prevent disaster. We are on track for the advent of ever more serious and frequent climate change related disasters. The Anthropocene is the current mass extinction event on Earth. It is entirely human caused. Poisonous pollution, land abuse, and global warming is a trifecta of our making. Let it not cause our demise.

I wrote “Outbound: Islands in the Void” and placed the time setting about 250 years in the future. I anticipated this time would be post cataclysmic climate disaster. The objective was to examine how Earth could recover and how people and society could rebound. A society in space might prevent further damage to Earth. There are significant resources within our Solar System that potentially could be used to support Earths recovery. The book project helped me to maintain optimism and my sanity. Hopefully Earth societies will survive and eventually recover and thrive. We are focused on Los Angeles today, but serious disasters are happening around the globe. Wars are a big cause of human misery and death. Today they are mostly politically and economically caused. Today migrating populations are causing social stress and lead to human misery, but they could lead to more wars. We peoples of Earth do not have a coordinated global effort to counter climate change. The disasters to come will make the Los Angeles fires seem small by comparison.

In the meantime, we all must help the victims of this disaster to find a new life. And our government and insurance companies should discourage rebuilding in these same canyons and other high-risk habitats.

Written By :

Richard Anderson

Post On :

January, 16, 2024

Tags:

Book, Author, Meta Mars, Outbound, science fiction, space

The Evolution of Life