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The year is 2010. The Los Angeles Department of Water & Power (LADWP) publishes its initial environmental study on a large power infrastructure maintenance project. A portion of the project involves replacing about 200 wooden power poles that run through Pacific Palisades. The California State Lands Commission reviewed the initial study and requested that LADWP provide a Native American Ground Monitor during any digging to ensure that cultural resources are not inadvertently damaged or destroyed. By the final EIR in 2016 LADWP decided that replacing the all of those +70 year old power poles was no longer necessary.
The year is 2018. The Camp Fire ignites in northern California. It's cause was the failure of a 100 year old power line. By early 2019 LADWP decides to replace those 70 year old powerlines running through Pacific Palisades, they're in a now deemed high fire threat area. The California Public Utilities Commission has recommended they be replaced as soon as possible. Work is to start in 2019.
July 7th, 2019. LADWP has started work to replace the power lines, as well as leveling and grading new fire roads. Amateur botanist and avid hiker David Pluenneke is hiking in the area. David is a member of the California Native Plant Society. He sees that LADWP has trampled the endangered Braunton’s milkvetch. In all, 183 milkvetches were murdered. He is livid:
(What exactly would happen to a blue whale in this scenario David? What other than a bulldozer could get that whale off the mountain David?)
Our hero David reports LADWP to the California Coastal Commission. The CCC is not happy with unpermitted work done within their fiefdom. In order to get a CCC approved permit to replace the wooden poles LADWP must:
I wasn't able to find if / when this particular project was completed by LADWP.Checking Google Street View, as of August 2023 these poles were not replaced. But overall there are 300,000+ power poles in LA. As of 2019, 65% of them were older than the average lifespan of 50 years old. In 2024, LADWP replaced just 2743 poles. Their average cost to replace a pole in the same year was $69,300. At their 2024 rates it will take LADWP over 70 years and $14 billion to replace all past lifespan poles.To relook at the culture war angle - why was their a fire in Pacific Palisades? Maybe Jonathan Rinderknecht will be found guilty, maybe he won't be. But Jonathan didn't create a massive tinderbox in the LA hills for ideological reasons. Jonathan didn't let firehoses go without water while they sat a mile away from an empty 100 million gallon revisor. Jonathan didn't empower a council of retards at the California Coastal Commission to nuke every project from orbit at the behest of any and every nature activist. LA burned with or without Jonathan, the parallel Eaton fire was just as destructive and (as to current knowledge) not caused by him.
There will always be Jonathan Rinderknechts. We won't fix them by grasping for the very abstract universal meaning, or high-minded civic metaphysics, or better pathways, or whatever. If we need to have a confrontation with modern liberalism, it shouldn't be because it "prizes the autonomy of the individual above the stability of society". It should be because it fucking sucks. It empowers tiny little bean counter despots to make sure your critical infrastructure construction isn't too loud for the little fishes. It sets environmentalists as legally prescribed tattletales against those that produce and build. It fails to build and maintain basic infrastructure, and housing, and anything that isn't a patronage network. We should ask "Why was there a massive tinderbox outside our second largest city", instead of "What can we do to make sure every young man feels special."
Reminds me of when Monsanto's anti-competitive, environment-harming practices directly led to one farmer murdering another. The person put on trial was the murderer, while nothing happened to Monsanto, even though they were so controversial that the jury instructions explicitly prohibited mentioning Monsanto.
It also took me too long to realize that Monsanto being enabled shows how useful all those heckler's veto environmentalist regulations were: Not very.
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As opposed to wildfires, which apparently pose no danger at all to the apparently fireproof plant....
And what would happen to the pot of petunias?
It's funny, because Braunton's milkvetch relies on wildfires to reproduce. "The beanlike seeds require scarification from fire or mechanical disturbance to break down their tough seed coats before they can germinate."
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This is a better take on the Palisades fire than my take.
And my general point still stands.
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