A few years ago, my brother-in-law, his brother, and their father narrowly escaped the Camp Fire.
Driving in a caravan down the only available road and surrounded by flames, they escaped a fire that killed 85 people and destroyed the town of Paradise, California, including two of my family members’ homes.
They still don’t really talk about it.
Just last year, one month before the fires that left the skies of the SF Bay Area bright red, my step daughters were evacuated from their dad’s house at 3:30am due to the LNU Lightning Complex Fire. First they drove South, but when they realized that their safe evacuation point was to the North, they made the unfortunate decision to drive back North on I-80 and ended driving up the freeway as both sides were engulfed in flames.
When our youngest reported this to us from safety, she recalled that our eldest had broken down in tears out of fear when they were surrounded by flames on the freeway.
I wouldn’t wish those two stories on anyone.
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So when I called my Senator today about the CEPP, I didn’t talk about the politics of Democrats potentially failing to pass the one component of the 2021 legislation that might move us off coal and natural gas and, finally, towards clean, renewable, American-made electricity.
I didn’t talk about how burning carbon fuels like coal and oil and natural gas is the root cause of the global warming that is changing our climate, and driving these fires.
I didn’t talk about Joe Manchin, or Kyrsten Sinema, or Joe Biden, or California politics.
I didn’t even discuss that if we don’t pass this bill now because some people are too greedy or powerful, or our politics are too broken, that we certainly will pass something similar, someday, when the cost of burning carbon becomes so irrevocably high, that moving to renewables looks cheap.
Instead, I just asked my Senator a simple question.
How many more towns will have to burn to the ground, how many more people will have to die, how many other human beings in addition to my brother-in-law and my step-daughters and their families will have to drive, scared for their lives, down roads engulfed in flames before politicians take action to protect us?
My California Senator didn’t have an answer.
