The thesis of the first column is pretty clear from the headline, "California spends billions rebuilding burned towns. The case for calling it quits." Here's an excerpt:
Most days, Ken Donnell steals a moment to gaze at the forested valley that surrounds this remote grid of streets in the mountains.
Before the Dixie fire came barreling through the Sierra Nevada last year, leveling everything here but a few houses, businesses and a school, this was a charming — if dying — Gold Rush-era town that about 800 people called home. Now, much of the charm is gone along with most of the residents, replaced by the skeletal remains of conifer trees and the deathly silence of block after empty block.
But even as Donnell has mourned, his mop of gray hair a fixture at community meetings on how to bring the town and the surrounding Plumas County valley back to life, he has become grateful.
It’s good that Greenville burned down when it did, he believes. Sooner rather than later. Because one day, in a not-so-distant future ravaged by climate change, many of Northern California’s far-flung rural towns — founded in another time and for another economy — might not get rebuilt at all.
Gone could be the political and public will to spend hundreds of millions of dollars — with Southern California taxpayers footing a big chunk of the bill — to replace homes and businesses for a small number of people, knowing that it’s all likely to burn down again as extreme heat and drought keep decimating unmanaged forests.
* * *
Something must change.
What California is doing is dangerous and unsustainable, yet it continues down a well-trodden path, never hesitating to rally around people who have lost their livelihoods to a disaster, whether it be a mudslide or an earthquake — but especially a wildfire.
We are #ParadiseStrong, #SantaRosaStrong, #GrizzlyFlatsStrong and now #GreenvilleStrong. And we’ve spent billions in taxpayer dollars to prove it, along with ensuring that Pacific Gas & Electric, responsible for sparking far too many of these destructive conflagrations, is on the hook to pay billions more and to help rebuild.
The framing for the other column is even more provocative and political. It is titled, "Rural climate skeptics are costing us time and money. Do we keep indulging them?" An excerpt follows:
This is the part of the state where climate change has become a full-fledged existential threat. Sure, Southern California is prone to its fair share of disasters, but it is in Northern California where catastrophic wildfires aren’t just likely but are certain to destroy remote small towns for decades to come.
Greenville, which burned down in last year’s Dixie fire, should serve as a potent reminder of this risk. But maddeningly, the people who love living in these rural wildlands don’t see it that way. Instead, they look at it as just one more challenge to overcome, like spotty cellphone service and far-off grocery stores and hospitals.
It’s a belief so widespread, so divorced from the terrifying reality of climate change, that the rest of us in California can’t keep ignoring it. Doing so is simply costing too many lives and too much money, and wasting too much time. Soon, living in rural Northern California won’t be as safe, as sustainable or even as beautiful as it once was. The Dixie fire was just the beginning.
* * *
Why the Dixie fire was able to enter Greenville at all, tucked away in the Indian Valley about 100 miles northeast of Lake Tahoe, has become the stuff of conspiracy theories. But what it left behind is undisputed fact.
Streets of empty lots where homes and businesses once stood. A non-functioning sewer system. Soil so contaminated that millions of dollars in environmental restoration will be needed. Stumps where trees once provided shade from the sun.
* * *
[One] line of thinking veers into grievance politics, insisting that catastrophic conflagrations wouldn’t be happening if left-leaning, big-city environmentalists hadn’t killed the logging industry in their right-leaning rural small towns. From there, the victimhood can morph into extremism, isolationism and paranoia.
Of course, the truth is a lot more complicated, given that forest mismanagement started with industrial logging of big — more resilient — trees from our forests. But these residents do have a point.
Hundreds of millions of dollars have been allocated for prescribed burns and mechanical thinning projects. And yet the treatment work is still being done far too slowly — an average of three to five years from conception to implementation. In some cases, it can take as many as seven years.
* * *
Are taxpayers who live in lower-risk cities willing to subsidize people who live in higher-risk rural towns, even if those people don’t have the means to live somewhere safer? And which is the fairest, most equitable use of public resources?
* * *
At some point, Californians must decide: Are we willing to pay more to maintain the status quo and rebuild every small rural town that burns down? Or do we want those who live there to pay more or even retreat to safer places?
* * *
For all of the anti-government, Trumpian rhetoric in Northern California about residents breaking away to form a right-wing State of Jefferson, most of their towns wouldn’t exist without massive public investment from liberal cities. And yet, if these same residents are forced to take on more financial responsibility for the risk of rural living, there will almost certainly be pushback.
Obviously, both of these columns are well worth reading. Other prior posts on Legal Ruralism that mention Greenville or Plumas County can be found here.
Postscript: In the wake of Hurricane Ian, don't miss this column asking the same question about rebuilding in coastal Florida, some of which is highly urban.
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