Apocalypse in LA: Not a Movie

I am a native of Los Angeles, born and raised. I graduated from UC Berkley and from USC journalism school. My first newspaper job was at the Los Angeles Daily Journal, where I covered LA City Hall and later state government in Sacramento. After that my career took me elsewhere in the country and finally to DC, where I spent years covering Congress, the White House and the State Department. During Ronald Reagan’s second term, I often traveled with his White House to Santa Barbara.

All this is to say that I am horrified by what is happening to California, that once magical place of orange groves and real movie stars, before all the traffic came and the oranges were imported and the stars became influencers without much influence. I have cousins who still live in the area, colleagues from the LATimes who are in affected areas, friends and relatives who have already evacuated.

But if I pull back a bit I see that this is entirely a man-made problem, one born of the politics of pessimism. Sometimes I think we are divided not between Blue and Red, nor Biden and Trump, but between those who seek to corral nature and those who respect it. The Left seeks to change nature, and instead they have unleashed its fury.

Ever since Al Gore lost the 2000 presidential campaign, he has been pushing — and the Left has embraced — a religion called climate change. Their Green New Deal is, as President-elect Trump often says, a scam. Their windmills are killing whales in the ocean, and many birds, and once they rust, these huge engines cannot be buried in landfills, apparently consigned to become forever blights on our landscape. Their war against fossil fuels has crippled our economy, and more, hurt our national security. And now, their war against nature has charred Pacific Palisades beyond recognition.

There is much talk about a Democratic governor and legislature that mismanaged the water supply and the forest debris and denied home insurance companies the right to raise rates commiserate with risks. There is much talk about incompetence by the LA Mayor who cut the fire department budget by $20 million and the LA Fire Chief who said her first priority is to hire not for merit but for diversity.

But instead of taking this moment of apocalyptic disaster to reflect on their own role in these calamities, the Left is blaming Donald Trump for daring to criticize California officials and mocking James Woods, a rare conservative in Hollywood, for a burned home. And instead of wondering why their attempts to control climate have only made the climate worse, they are lamenting that they have not done enough to curb emissions. In a piece entitled “As Los Angeles Burns,” American Thinker wrote this morning: “They ask forgiveness for their sin of emitting too much carbon dioxide, and promise to repent by only doing their laundry when the sun is shining.”

As I wrote in an earlier piece, without a belief in God, the Left swims between trends — climate change, transgenderism, Critical Race Theory, diversity. Without anchor in a Creator who has given us a beautiful planet, with butterflies and streams and mountains and beaches, they cling to Gods of their own making.

I do not know how we can convince them to prune their forests or import water. I hope a second-term President Trump has some clever negotiating tricks up his sleeve.

But I know one thing. At our own peril do we let the USA become California. LA is a lesson that we must reclaim this issue from the radicals. Credible scientists have questioned the specter of extreme climate change, arguing that change over time is normal. It is time, long past, to take advantage of our natural riches without shame.

Or, as Trump put its, “Drill, Baby, Drill.”