I'm writing this to ask about coverage of the California fires. Though of course I have sympathy for the people affected, I have a question. Does it really make sense to build suburbs in chaparral/scrubbrush country, where wildfire is part of the ecosystem? It might make more sense to build high-density apartments/condos there and leave the surrounding land semi-wild, so the human habitation could be protected from the inevitable fires.
This problem seems to me similar to the Midwest river flood problem, where many in the MW have concluded that it's stupid to rebuild in a flood plain, and have relocated their towns a bit upland with Federal funds.
There's also the problem of the Atlantic coast hurricane zone, extending from the Florida Keys to Virginia. It's rather irresistible to want to live on the coast (if you like the ocean--I do), but you should know that everything could be a washout with the next Andrew. And Global Warming Theory predicts that these washouts (plus rising sea levels) will make my current home untenable at best and flotsam at worst fairly soon.
To clarify, I live in a condo on the east coast of Florida (a former wetland and one foot above sea level), and we have destroyed the natural water system with our slavish devotion to the auto, and our extended suburbs. The wetlands that could have absorbed water have been overrun with asphalt and drainage systems that get rid of rainwater; we must now rely on inland wetlands for water and are subject to drought, even when it's been raining heavy thunderstorms. We're also subject to flood, because the asphalt-topped system can't handle normal rain, It's an insane form of land management, and I blame the "free market" entirely. I would redefine the free market as stupid and corrupt developers and their greedhead allies in local government. Some freedom. I hate living here and will be moving to foothill Appalachia in Georgia soon. I'll miss the ocean, but I won't miss the suicidal land mismanagement, which everyone here knows full well, even the Global Warming-denying Republicans like my mother and her friends. They all know they're doomed.
Back to my original point--is Claifornis going to be rebuilt in the same stupid way it was built? If so, I want no part of it. And no Fed funds unless they remake their plan accommodate wild country and protectable high-density dwellings.
Has anyone read Ecology of Fear or City of Quartz by Mike Davis? They're great and scary books about the development and destruction of S California. Did you know that when the first Spaniards came to SoCal they found it a paradise? They recognized the weather and landscape features from Spain, but with so much more water and marshland and vegetation and wildlife. Don't believe anyone who says SoCal is a desert--it wasn't until human mismanagement screwed it up entirely, to the point that even the winter/spring rains have to be poured into the ocean, while the drinking water is imported from the north. What insanity, and Florida's no better.
Will these fires teach anyone free marketeer in SoCal the folly of their ways? As a Floridian, I doubt it.