[macspoofing]

>I agree that the forests should be managed differently, but if this being "California's mismanagement" is an actual thing as opposed to political disinformation, I'd love to see a couple links to back it up.

There are two narratives here. The Democrats want to blame Climate Change. Republicans want to blame California's mismanagement. Both are correct but there is no policy that any government could implement that will solve climate change in the next few decades. But you literally have Biden going around and blaming Trump for these fires when there is no climate policy that United States could have implemented in the last 2 decades that would have made any difference.

On the other hand, regardless of climate change, California has implemented policies that created this problem and California can implement policies that will prevent future wildfires from spreading out of control. But California is a mess. Controlled burns are constantly challenged in court by activists and NIMBYs and bogged down by environmental regulations. California needs to perform controlled burns of around a million acres of land, but is doing something on the order a few thousand even with a backlog of 20 million acres[1]. Logging policy has clear-cut forest replaced with dense bush[2]. And bad vegetation management policy has been the mantra for decades in California.

In this case, the Democrats are wrong and are engaging in outright lying in order to deflect blame. Climate change is an important issue, but climate change policy is not going to result in a solution for these wildfires.

>Some quick googling suggests that it's mostly a Federal problem

How? How is this a federal problem?

[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/why-isnt-california-...

[2] https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-10-14/newsom-clea...

[jartelt]

The vast majority of forest land in California is owned by the federal government and is National Forest land. California can't just go and run controlled burns in those federally controlled forests. That would need to be done in cooperation or under the direction of the US Forest Service and should be funded by the US Forest Service since they own the land.

If the federal government wants better forest management in the National Forests, they should increase funding for forest management and hire more employees into the US Forest Service.

You can certainly blame California for allowing people to build homes at the wildland urban interface and for not requiring homeowners to take better fire defensibility measures. The forests are a more complicated issue and the feds take much of the blame.

[blackflame7000]

If the feds were the problem, why aren't other states such as Texas or Colorado which have similar geographical features to California experiencing the same perpetual fire seasons over and over?

[macspoofing]

Sure - you can have that discussion. What the Democrats are doing is blaming climate change and Trump's climate change policy. Surely you agree that that is just dishonest.

[jartelt]

The only solution to the wildfire problem offered by Trump is that California should do a better job raking up leaves/pine needles and should remove more dead fuel from forests. I think that is much more intellectually dishonest, especially given that Trump is in control of the US Forest Service, which is the agency that would be in charge of raking the leaves and removing the dead trees...

If Trump drastically increases the budget to the USFS and starts a new and improved forest management program, I will gladly applaud the effort. Sadly, I doubt that will happen.

[kwillets]

I see Trump as largely out of the discussion; for instance during the Carr Fire he said they needed more water (besides the stupidity of using water, Carr Powerhouse is a major transfer point for the California water system).

Newsom relies on blaming PG&E and Global Warming; he seems to be the political version of the Deep Pockets Theory.

Neither politician offers help for people whose homes are in imminent danger.

[kelnos]

> Newsom relies on blaming PG&E and Global Warming

I'm actually very surprised we haven't heard him blame the feds.

[jvanderbot]

Yes. Climate change should be met with mitigation (to avoid further climate change) and realistic adaptations of forest management.

But, to make matters worse, the baseline expected rate of fires is higher due to climate change, and is much higher due to PG&E negligence.

We can and should attack all factors with regulation, maintenance policy change, etc. The fact is, we had maintenance policies for PG&E's portion, and they were negligent.

[macspoofing]

>the baseline expected rate of fires is higher due to climate change,

Yes. But we can't control the climate. Or rather climate change will require policies spanning decades or centuries.

>and is much higher due to PG&E negligence

Sure. PG&E should be held accountable for their part. But to mark them as a cause is not right. California was a tinderbox waiting for a spark to start the explosion. It could have been anything, and in fact, there were many 'sparks' that started a bunch of these fires. You make PG&E the scapegoat, you're going to miss the true culprit - bad vegetation management.