I can’t get in touch with my buddy in Lahaina on the island of Maui. Phones, e-mails, texts – nothing gets through.
The fires which have destroyed that part of Hawaii may be a harbinger of the kinds of problems we all will face in the future, due to our laxness in failing to slap down the Political Class.
Let me jump a few thousand miles east of Maui to the US SouthWest. Back when the first immigrants to North America ran the place, they deliberately set fires in the forests in the fall, rotating the burn sites on about a 9 or 10 year cycle. This was a labor-saving way of hunting: in the spring, lots of tender young shoots would sprout up in the burned areas, and animals would come from near & far to feed – saving the Indians the wearying task of tracking animals in never-ending forests. The result of these small fires was healthy forests, without dead trees or excessive undergrowth, When the Europeans arrived, they reported being able to ride horses through the forests; today, it can be a struggle to get through the dense growth on foot.
The Political Class decided that forest fires were a Bad Thing, and stopped the native practices –
environmental reasons, of course. This has led to today’s seriously overgrown mismanaged forests, and the resulting occasional devastating large fires. Good intentions/bad results – all due to Political Class arrogance & ignorance.
The issue is we can let them mismanage the forests for decades before the dreadful consequences become apparent. Today, we are letting the same failing Political Class mismanage power supplies, fuel supplies, water supplies, food supplies, industrial capacity, infrastructure, and who-knows-what else. We peons will undoubtedly pay a price for this – maybe tomorrow, maybe later, but definitely some day.
