The Globe & Mail to the north tells us that the massive California wildfires, or at least the damage they are inflicting, is the result of Western migration and overpopulation, the excesses of the Hollywood rich, the stupidity of people who refuse to evacuate, and also global warming. You know what, the folks at the Globe & Mail are fucking idiots.
Aside
For one thing, if what they were saying was true, there would be far more civilian fatalities than the one so far reported. And I heard on NPR this morning that people were remarkably willing to evacuate, even at great personal cost (leaving behind worldly possessions, treasured heirlooms, pets, and livestock), after learning the lessons of the large fires four years ago. Yes, rich people live in Malibu, and so do non-rich people, and that really seems irrelevant when the fires are this widespread. Drought is a never-ending problem in California, after all water has been something worth killing for since the beginning of the great western migration, and I’m not sure how you can force millions of people to move away so as to solve it: instead California has some of the strictest conservation and environmental protection laws in the nation, perhaps the world, in efforts to preserve water, fight pollution, and stave off these sorts of disasters.