OPINION:
Over the next few days and weeks, one thing that is as sure as the sunrise is that political leaders, such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, will repeatedly tell you that the recent fires that swept through their communities were caused by, you guessed it, climate change.
They will claim that the Los Angeles crisis is further proof that fossil fuels and cow flatulence are destroying the planet. They will argue that gas stoves and furnaces must be banned. They will assert that the Golden State’s only hope for survival is to cover tens of thousands of acres of food-producing farmland with solar panels and windmills. They will blame you and the American way of life for the Palisades inferno. They will tell you that if you don’t submit immediately and grant them ultimate power to govern every aspect of your life, the oceans will rise, the forests will die and your neighborhoods will burn.
This will all be lies.
The truth is that we have known about the seasonal Santa Ana winds and the wildfires they cause for millennia. Anyone who spends five minutes reading will quickly find that these fires predate the Industrial Revolution and modern climate propaganda. Historical records from our own government, for instance, indicate that large wildfires have been a natural part of California’s ecosystem for hundreds of years, and their frequency has remained consistent over the last century.
No one should have been surprised by this past week’s winds and flames. However, the devastation was caused not by the cars we drove or our neighbors’ cows but by the people we elected. Everything that just happened in Los Angeles could have been prevented. Politics caused this crisis, not science.
Fact: The Santa Ana winds were going to happen. They always have and always will.
Fact: Knowing this, Mr. Newsom cut tens of millions of dollars of funding for preventing forest fires and failed to store sufficient water reserves to fight the inevitable flames.
Fact: At the same time, Ms. Bass cut $17.5 million from the Los Angeles Fire Department and then went on vacation while her city was left to burn because of her neglect.
Fact: Rather than fund critical services that would mitigate crime, social chaos and the predictable consequences of natural disasters, the Democratic Party currently running California persists in throwing untold dollars at social engineering, open borders and their green religion.
Michael Schellenberger, author of “Apocalypse Never,” summarizes it well: “Governor Newsom and Mayor Bass have known about the hazards of the Santa Ana winds for all their careers, but yet they failed to deal with them. Their rank incompetence and lack of leadership are shocking and scandalous. It’s hard to overstate how badly they screwed up.”
“And why is that?” asks Mr. Schellenberger. “Part of the reason is that they [Mr. Newsom and Ms. Bass] are focused on other things. Making the fire department more racially diverse. Climate change. [Pandering to] Homelessness. … Year after year, they do nothing while focusing on things like trans and Trump and climate [while] ignoring the things that really matter to the people of California.”
Mr. Schellenberger goes on to explain why he, as a former card-carrying member of this “radical Left,” now presumes to criticize those with whom he formerly aligned. “When I was young [and] radical, I moved to California for that reason. But as [I became] older, [I] became more moderate. [I] became more practical. [I] understood firefighters and police officers were necessary. [I was] reminded of the importance of things like safe streets and hard work and good schools. But more than that, I saw the consequences of radical progressive policies on the environment, crime, education, water, and everything else.”
In other words, Mr. Schellenberger grew up and recognized the lies of his youth and the lies of his leaders.
Gavin Newsom, Karen Bass and all who parrot the Democrats’ party line are liars. They tell you that humans can control the climate when we can’t. They tell you that cutting funding to the police will decrease crime when it won’t. They tell you that men are women and women are men when they aren’t. They tell you that ignoring our borders will make us safe and that giving syringes to drug addicts will make them sober. And they tell you that the way to stop fires is to leave dry brush on the landscape and have no water in your hydrants when the winds begin to blow. They tell you lie after lie and lie.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn once said, “The simplest and most accessible key to our self-neglected liberation lies right here: Personal non-participation in lies.”
The only thing that will save California and our nation from the fires caused by these fools — the only thing that will restore our “self-neglected liberation” — is for all of us to stop participating in their lies and elect governors and mayors who will simply tell the truth.
• Everett Piper (dreverettpiper.com, @dreverettpiper), a columnist for The Washington Times, is a former university president and radio host. He is the author of “Not a Daycare: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery).
This post was originally published on here
