Only Bipartisanship Can Prevent Forest Fires!
Last weekend, a friend of mine visited San Jose for a conference and mentioned how bad the air pollution was there. When I woke up in the morning after breathing in all that dust, she said, I felt like I was getting sick.
The fires in California are a hot topic right now (no pun intended), so I thought I’d investigate. A quick Google search yielded these results:
This was an interesting introductory survey of information – Vox leans heavily on the left, Al-Jazeera is fairly unbiased (as far as American news goes), and Breitbart falls on the extreme right. When I clicked each headline, it became clear that I would need to tread lightly:
As expected, the Vox and Breitbart sources were diametrically opposed, while Al-Jazeera mostly reported quotes and figures. Rather than concede to my usual, and admittedly lazy, approach to the news which relies on word-of-mouth and Twitter rants, I decided to go all out and do my research. This meant evaluating the claims and counterarguments of the left and right to try and find the truth in the midst of it all. This meant looking for the peer-reviewed sources and scholarly articles. This meant bipartisanship.
To make life easier for you all, I’ve compiled the main points and takeaways for your convenience. The sources are in the hyperlinks indicated by an “x,” so feel free to click away. You’re welcome.
Arguments from the left:
- Ryan Zinke is wrong to blame environmentalists for California’s fires
- President Trump is wrong to blame the “gross mismanagement of forests” and “bad environmental laws” (ex. claims that the water was being diverted into the Pacific Ocean)
- Commercial logging would not be helpful to reduce fire risk
- Global climate change plays a role in the severity of California’s current forest fires
Arguments from the right:
- President Trump is right to blame poor forest management practices by the state of California
- The California fires have nothing to do with human-driven climate change – “offshore-directed Diablo winds” are the cause
- The conditions were not un-seasonally dry in California
Take-Away Points (also known as TL;DR):
Forest management could improve; although policy calls for flexible responses to wildfires, actual response has been stagnant because of liability and casualty risks (x). It is true that California has allowed homes to be built in high-risk, contributing to the lives lost. However, most fires happen on federal lands in California (x) so Trump is really blaming his own administration here. Trump’s demand for a “remedy now” is still ridiculous – a problem years in the making will take years to fix.
Although commercial logging would make matters worse (x), selection cutting systems that target high-risk trees and plant trees in other areas – essentially treating forests like a large garden – could mitigate destructive wildfires and promote healthy forests (x).
The Diablo winds in North California and the Santa Ana winds in South California both play major roles in fueling the fires into a blaze – they are dry gusts of wind that dessicate vegetation and spread embers (x). While it is true that these winds are a separate weather phenomenon from global climate change, that’s not to discount global climate change or human influence entirely. Global climate change has increased fire risk and drought conditions such that hot and dry conditions are likely to coincide (x). Human-started wildfires and arson have also contributed to a longer fire season (x).
Stay safe, folks. And remember:
-Monica
An unbrave new world
“We only will allow those who come into our Country legally.”
I hate to give any sort of platform to Trump, let alone open my own piece with his quote (*gag*) but I was reading an article about the “migrant crisis” and this particular sentence caught my immediate attention. I could not overlook the capital “C” in “Country.”
Okay! I’m sure I’m reading too much into this and it was likely just Donald Trump’s tacky autocorrect affirming his nationalism. But I’m someone who sees value and purpose in quips like this, regardless of their intention, and I really do feel that it is important to ask ourselves what message the capital letter is intended to communicate.
I see the capitalization of this (for all other intents and purposes) improper noun as a way of more deeply inciting the violent nationalism upon which Trump has built his platform. He makes an improper noun a proper one and implies that it is proper by virtue of beings ours. It comes off like some weird grab at the Him/God parallel. Think about the last time you saw “Him” in any piece of writing…did you know who/what the typically-improper-but-in-this-instance-proper noun was referring to?
I’m not the first person to comment on Trump’s tweeting “habit” (hobby? Side gig? Primary presidential duty?) and I certainly won’t be the last, but I do feel the poetics (sorry to use that word in this frame) of the tweets warrant some attention, perhaps as much as the content they discuss. Because when anyone writes anything, the stylistic decisions are kind of pivotal to how effectively the content is communicated. Right? And does content matter at all if it isn’t effectively communicated? I can shout into the void that I hate my Uncle Stanley but unless I actually tell Uncle Stanley, how can he possibly know I hate him?
After the capital C sentence, he goes on to cite “decades of abuse.” What a word choice, Mr. Trump. What a word choice! As if immigrants seeking a better life constitutes “abuse.” As if cruel intentions are inherent to a group of people looking for precisely what our country is claimed to have been built on, simply because they want to work. As if it nears any of the other instances of abuse which fall under that blanket word.
In a tweet five days ago, Trump said, “The Fake News is showing old footage…no climbers anymore under our Administration!” Again, I can’t ignore his incessant capitalization of improper nouns, because it feels like gaslighting with frightening precision for such a loaf. Was it just a few weeks ago members of the media were sent bomb threats by someone emboldened by Trump and his totally incorrect claims to “fake news?” It sure is hard to know after looking at his twitter, which is littered left and right with details about all the fake news that the Fake News is writing. It’s amazing what a platform he gives something he claims to believe is fake, but that’s an insight for another news brief.
As I go on reading, I actually do wonder if this is him gaslighting blind and ignorant followers, or if he just has a really crappy autocorrect or maybe a very fat left thumb. But then, I still think intention matters very little here. His use of capitalization is a facet in his communication by virtue of the fact that he’s one of the most-watched people on Twitter, and should therefore be pretty conscientious about his stylistic decisions. I don’t use this word lightly when I say I find his tweets to truly be an abuse of rhetoric, a shame for all poets everywhere who make proper and meaningful use of things like capitalization and punctuation. He shits all over poetics and realigns their rules to incite the ugliest kinds of violence and hate.
Here is the article that prompted me to stalk Trump’s twitter:
And I just want to say before I sign off – how has no one in his “Administration” let him know that it is only okay to retweet yourself if it was a funny tweet from many years ago?! Not if it was *another* tweet about fake news from yesterday! I often feel like his Admin actually wants him to look like an idiot, and this is just another block pulled out of his Jenga tower.
-NG
The Junction Journal 