Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

What is Fueling the L. A. Fires?

The obvious answer in terms of tinder-dry flammable materials, the Santa Ana winds, etc. does not cut deep enough. Ideologically, nature idolatry plays a major role in the ferocity, force, and human impact of the L. A. fires.  Their source is in radical environmentalism. Radical environmentalism, as opposed to a wise stewardship of nature, is an anti-humanism. This species of wokery issues in extreme misanthropy.  By radical environmentalism I mean positions like that of David Foreman, founder of Earth First.  His extremism is displayed in the following quotations:

  • “Our environmental problems originate in the hubris of imagining ourselves as the central nervous system or the brain of nature. We’re not the brain, we are a cancer on nature.”
  • “Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental.”
  • “Humanity is the cancer of nature.”
  • “I believe that human overpopulation is the fundamental problem on Earth Today” and, “We humans have become a disease, the Humanpox.”
  • “The optimum human population of earth is zero.”

This AI-generated list may be verified at AZ Quotes.

Quote-the-optimum-human-population-of-earth-is-zero-david-foreman-78-94-43

Now not every environmentalist on the Left embraces the late Foreman's absurdities. But the mitigated forms of leftist environmentalism are also objectionable.  Here is a paradox worth thinking about. A sane environmentalism cannot be anti-human. It must promote human flourishing. But this will require various violent interventions in nature including drilling, mining, farming, dam-building, tunneling, road-building, and the like.  These are anti-environmental actions. To refuse to manage nature for the sake of human flourishing by engaging in these anti-environmental actions will lead, as it has in the case of the California conflagration, to a worse environmental outcome.

That is the paradox. A sound environmentalism must be in some measure anti-environmental.  But a paradox is not a contradiction, and this is one that must be accepted.

So, even apart from arson, the L. A. inferno is in large part man-made by the likes of Governor Hair-Style and Mayor Dumbass. (Those choice epithets courtesy of Kurt Schlichter.) Wildfires there will always be. Their benighted policies, however,  have made things worse than they had to be.

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Bill Vallicella

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6 responses to “What is Fueling the L. A. Fires?”

  1. Joe Odegaard Avatar
    Joe Odegaard

    David Foreman needs to realize that humans are the only species that can deflect the next killer asteroid.
    But maybe he would welcome that too.
    Any Catholic Church worth its salt would be roaring anathemas at at David Foreman.

    Reply
  2. Richard Norris Avatar
    Richard Norris

    It would seem that humans existed before any of the above mentioned activities, but it also seems that there is a human environment to consider which is not exactly apart or above the natural one, as it is our nature to fabricate homes and other spaces for ourselves. So while men like David Foreman might claim to love “nature”, they only do so partially and to our species detriment.
    While the extreme leftist response often portrays humans as a disease or cancer by colonizing “untouched” nature, the conservative view reinforces this by imagining mining, drilling, farming, dam-building, tunneling, and road-building as somehow “not natural”. So how do you collapse what seems to be a false dichotomy?

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  3. BV Avatar
    BV

    Joe,
    Some years ago Bergoglio the Benighted was much exercised over straws in the ocean. A secular leftist in papal disguise. Am I exaggerating? By how much?

    Reply
  4. BV Avatar
    BV

    Richard,
    There are two extremes, both to be avoided. There is the Foreman extreme according to which man is a cancer on nature when he is clearly (in his animalic existence) part of nature and rightly so.
    The other extreme is to take nature as nothing but raw material to exploited for human projects. But note that this is also a leftist view insofar as it is a classically Marxist position.
    The point I was making is that sound a sound environmentalism must violate nature in certain ways precisely to preserve nature. Dam-building, for example, is a necessary evil if we are to have the water resources at the ready to combat wildfires.

    Reply
  5. Malcolm Pollack Avatar
    Malcolm Pollack

    The correct response to “The optimum human population of Earth is zero” is:
    “After you, sir.”

    Reply
  6. BV Avatar
    BV

    Well said, Malcolm.
    Foreman and the Monkey-Wrenchers derived a lot of inspiration from “Cactus Ed” Abbey who lived not far from here, in Oracle, AZ. He died in 1989, a couple years before I arrived in these parts. He advocated Zero Population Growth, and railed against procreation despite siring five or so kiddies of his own.
    He cared so much about the environment that he threw his empty beer cans out the window as he roared along in a gas-guzzling old Cadillac. Called to account, he justified his littering by saying that there shouldn’t have been a road there in the first place. A red-necked greenie.
    A real character, he’s been called the Thoreau of the American Southwest. I’d say Desert Solitaire is his best novel. A ‘regional author’ as some will derisively say, sneered upon by the Eastern Establishment. He had cutting things to say about Updike, but also about Kerouac, whom Updike mocked as “Jack Crackerjack.”
    Confessions of a Barbarian collects some of his journal entries. An enjoyable read.

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