Thread by @ShellenbergerMD

Don’t believe hype about California

Deadly fires + black-outs = 100% PREVENTABLE

Green dogmatists Gov Jerry Brown & Gavin Newsom a) let biomass build up bc “natural” & b) made energy scarce/expensive with renewables, efficiency & nuclear-killing, distracting from grid stability

https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1188796085256384512

In 2016, Calif. legislature UNANIIMOUSLY PASSED legislation that would have required local governments to map & deal with elect. lines made dangerous by biomass

Might have prevented deadly fires of 2017, 2018 & fires in 2019

And yet Gov. @JerryBrownGov VETOED the bill!

Why?

Many on the Left dismissed significance of Brown veto as a right-wing myth, but it’s not

Left and right agree that the veto was horrible at every level

Here’s progressive (and anti-nuclear) Jamie Court

“This bill was neither insignificant nor small”

consumerwatchdog.org/energy/gov-bro…

Why did Brown do it? Court blames PG&E.

“Why would governor veto unanimous legislation? ... PG&E, which was too embarrassed to openly oppose the bill, whispered in the ear of the Admin.... that former PG&E executives were Brown’s top aides made that whisper probable.”

Court may be right about Brown veto of wire-clearing legislation but Brown/Newsom opposition to broader forest clearing stems from being ideologically captured by bad green dogma about not clearing forests of accumulating biomass, aka kindling

How do I know? Because after I helped save California's's last ancient redwoods in the late 1990s, I advocated the very "zero-cut" policies that stopped the proper management of forests, including clearing kindling/biomass, as I myself was in the grip of a Romantic forest dogma

There were abuses in the past. Sometimes there was clear-cutting rather than thinning. The US Forest Service had financial incentive to allow over-logging.

But zero-cut was a massive and dangerous over-reaction driven by the appeal-to-nature fallacy that "natural" is best.

The problem with the "natural is best" approach to forests is that it's not clear what "natural" is in a state where most of our forests were clear-cut logged over 100 years ago

And while forest fires are natural the build-up of woody biomass — b/c of past clear-cutting — isn't

Ancient redwood forests do require periodic fires in order to allow for the release of seeds from their cones and to fertilize the soils.

Big old trees (500 - 2000 yrs old) are usually unaffected, which is why their bark is often charred from past fires.

But today's second/third growth forests contain thin, highly flammable trees, most the exact same age

They have to be regularly cut or thinned in order to prevent the hot, out-of-control fires that plague California & which emit as much CO2 as all of our electricity production!

Managing forests & biomass around wires is not rocket science. The reason California failed so catastrophically do the basic is because of a) extreme anti-logging dogma and b) a narrow focus on scaling up renewables & killing the state's nuclear plants

What do I mean by distracted? I mean governors Brown-Newsom have been obsessed with killing nuclear, subsidizing renewables, and creating a billion dollar cap & trade slush fund for allied businesses and NGOs, not basic maintainence of grid

environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2018/…