
It’s the End of California as We Know It - tysone
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/opinion/california-fires.html
======
Ididntdothis
Somehow I feel this is not only a California problem but the whole US. The
country seems to be incapable of or unwilling to address fundamental problems.
Instead you are getting endless political fights while infrastructure is
falling apart. The contrasts in Silicon Valley and LA are extreme. You have
some of the richest people in the world living in beautiful mansions with
cities around them full of homeless people, roads full of potholes and power
outages. Same for health care. No matter if you like socialized medicine or
free markets, nobody should be able to justify the current state of things but
nothing gets done.

Sometimes it feels like the whole country is just turning into a weird reality
show.

~~~
Reedx
Yeah, I'm concerned that what we're seeing around the country is institutional
decay.

We've been increasingly replacing competence with people who tell us what we
want to hear. Entertainment over substance. Short-term, feel good solutions
over thoughtful long-term solutions.

Now the results of that are starting to manifest.

~~~
defterGoose
Always an appropriate time to remember that Rome didn't fall in a day. We seem
to be experiencing the proverbial frog-boil IMHO.

~~~
dickeytk
that frog only exists within proverbs! real frogs jump out!

~~~
symplee
Mars and beyond anyone?

~~~
danielrpa
Eventually we'd also turn Mars into California.

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solidasparagus
It's funny because having lived outside of the US, it has always blown my mind
how extraordinarily well California/the US handles natural disasters like
wildfires. The worst wildfire season ever in a state of 40M people, 18,000
buildings destroyed and fewer than 100 people died?!?

Similarly the infrastructure/public services are quite incredible in the US. I
grew up with daily 6 hour blackouts and water brought in by truck because
there the city didn't have a working water supply network.

We shouldn't be content with how things are and the article makes some valid
points that I'm not trying to diminish, but it doesn't hurt to have a little
appreciation for what incredibly high standards we have here before calling
California a 'dystopian apocalypse'.

~~~
BurningFrog
Previous years, the response has been a bit off, but the 2019 season the
Powers That Be have been _ready_!

Perhaps because these fires are closer to the big city power centers, but I'm
sure also "practice makes perfect"!

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jdhn
To paraphrase James Carville, "It's the people, stupid". It seems like there's
a lot of Californians who talk about sustainability, but then turn right
around and vote in people who continue to promote suburban sprawl, single
family houses, zoning that doesn't promote density, and lack of investment in
public transportation.

~~~
gduffy
No offense, but your thinking here is actually a bigger part of the problem.

There is nothing fundamentally unsustainable about suburbs, single family
homes, low density, or cars. 50% of the USA is totally uninhabited, and it is
possible today to build a totally off-grid and sustainable single family home
/ suburb in the majority of it.

You can even capture carbon in concrete. Don't prescribe solutions just
because _you_ prefer them, set incentives and goals to favor the right
outcomes and let people decide and optimize how to do it.

Your urban utopia is my hellscape, and my suburban utopia is yours. The good
news is, this is America, and we can both live here. Good fences make good
neighbors.

P.S. most of the $2 trillion real estate market in the Bay Area where I have
lived for 12 years exists precisely because our politicians DON'T promote
further development, sustainable or otherwise. Most of what's here is
decaying, old, unsustainable, whether it is high or low density, and nobody
can afford to improve it because all the tradespeople got priced out and left
years ago.

~~~
StudentStuff
Paving our best farmland is not sustainable, nor is deluding yourself that we
can capture carbon at anywhere near the rate needed to prevent severe change
in our weather patterns.

US suburbs are heavily subsidized with federal dollars[1], this is a huge
reason why PGE can't effectively maintain the infrastructure in California.
The ratepayers & tax base cannot afford to repipe a suburban neighborhood when
the water service lines hit end of design life, let alone repaving,
maintaining gas, electrical service, telecom & cable[2]. This is also why
Fiber buildouts are so uncommon in suburbs (for-profit companies won't make
their money back within a decade).

We have designed an extremely expensive mousetrap of suburbia where you get
degrading public services (as maintenance & replacement bills accrue and go
unmet), nearly mandatory car ownership, and higher rates of health problems
caused by the poor design of these neighborhoods[3].

1 - [https://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/we-have-
always-...](https://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/we-have-always-
subsidized-suburbia/)

2 - [https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/9/27/a-texas-
sized-...](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/9/27/a-texas-sized-
pavement-problem)

3 - [https://www.webmd.com/women/news/20040927/suburbs-may-be-
haz...](https://www.webmd.com/women/news/20040927/suburbs-may-be-hazardous-to-
your-health#1)

~~~
gduffy
I'm not counting paving farmland, friend. Also, go look up aeroponics and 3D
farming.

We don't need PG&E. The sun gives us free energy, and batteries + thermal
energy storage can cover the cloudiest of days.

Well-designed suburbs don't need to be subsidized. And they can also be
healthier and happier for you and your family (quiet, safe, better air
quality, elbow-room, &etc). Just decentralize large cities by building smaller
mixed-use "downtowns" surrounded by layers of variable density housing. Single
family homes with yards are a part of that.

I'm moving and will be putting this into practice, instead of sitting back and
seeing what happens. My cost of living will go down _even though I am self-
providing all of my family 's utilities_.

I might even use the savings to build more than just my own needs... creating
opportunities for those with less capital to make the same choice to enjoy a
better life at an affordable cost.

P.S. I have done the carbon calculations, and burying it in concrete is a good
part of a total solution. "Deluding." Hah. A head not in the sand can more
easily look in the mirror!

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WheelsAtLarge
As much as I want to say that Farhad is wrong, I can't. He is right. We can't
continue to live the way we have. We are seeing the results of kicking the
can, also known as the fix, down the road. We hope that things will get fixed
eventually but not now. We feel that somehow it will be easier to fix by the
next generation. Unfortunately, it only gets harder. We'll just have to suffer
more when the fix is finally made.

~~~
baggy_trough
Do we even agree what the fix is?

~~~
Animats
A lot of tree trimming and removal. Lots of heavy equipment. Firebreaks a mile
wide. More full-time Cal Fire people and equipment. Recycled 747s as water
tankers (there's already one.) More underground power lines. Not really that
hard.

~~~
mobilefriendly
No, the solution is returning to the natural regular burns that are part of
the ecosystem in California. Zero tolerance fire-fighting is the main issue at
hand, as it builds up kindling to infernos.

~~~
mokus
And controlled burns. The land WILL burn - why would we NOT let it burn at a
time of our choosing, such as the middle of the rainy season when we have the
best control over it?

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opportune
Part of the issue is definitely that California is the biggest, most
influential, and one of the wealthiest states. The federal government is less
incentivized to help us out in some ways, because theoretically, we can afford
it.

But in aggregate, this is really what the people of California wanted.
Suburbanization is popular at the voting booth, as are low property taxes.
Californians wanted to freeze time in the 80s and that's what they got.

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cft
There's a certain smell of absurdity in the air in California.

Ban on plastic straws - garbage on highway shoulders on 280 and 101 in San
Francisco county

Strictest car emission laws in the Union - fires poison the air to the extent
that people die, equivalent to multiple involuntary cigarettes per day

This list can go on and on. Those working for large companies like Google and
Apple are protected for now: like in the fortresses. If you are trying to
strike here on your own- probably too late- no affordable garages anymore.

Maybe it's a consequence of one party system? I came here in 1999 to go to
Stanford. Perhaps it's time to pack up.

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goodsignal
It's interesting to observe the length of time it has taken for a power
utility to crumble. I believe the disintegration we're seeing now began with
the governmental deregulation of utilities during the Regan administration.
The current state was predicted by losers in that round of voting. We are now
seeing the tipping point of those regulatory changes.

I think in other industries we might have seen these problems arise much
sooner. But the utilities are slow, colossal beasts that take decades for
changes to really take affect.

~~~
masonic
There was no deregulation of CA utilities under Re _a_ gan, either as Governor
or as President.

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davidscolgan
I'm a freelance web developer from rural Indiana and want to move somewhere in
the US I can at least possibly stay for a decade or more. Does anyone
recommend a city/state that will survive the climate apocalypse, that is well
managed, and/or that is doing everything the author of this article is saying
California isn't doing?

I've had a hard time figuring out where to live since I don't have to be
anywhere in particular for my job.

~~~
paulbaumgart
Storrs, CT, according to Slate: [https://slate.com/news-and-
politics/2005/09/where-to-hide-fr...](https://slate.com/news-and-
politics/2005/09/where-to-hide-from-mother-nature.amp)

~~~
mitfahrener
Lol. Lived there during middle/high school when my dad worked at UCONN. A good
place to grow up for sure. Winter was cold though!

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tehlike
Sometimes i wonder... Washington doesnt have the income tax, but it feels much
better there.

Am i imagining this?

~~~
RickJWagner
I was thinking along the same lines. I live in a state with less government
(and less proportional revenue), we don't have the kinds of problems
California does.

~~~
defterGoose
At least on the fire front, Washington doesn't have the desert-forest
interface or lack of rain that CA does. On most other fronts we have the same
problems as other states, writ large. Hard to compare given how diverse
(demographically, geographically, etc.) we are.

