I understand and agree with the sentiment, but I mean, aren’t wild fires supposed to be an expected natural disaster? They’re just getting worse due to more ideal conditions?
Yes. And also the explanation for why they’re worsening is not exclusively because of fossil fuels/climate change. That is a factor, but others include terrible forestry practices (including, somewhat paradoxically, fire mitigation and fighting).
Not trying to let oil and gas companies off the hook. It’s just an issue that has a lot of shared blame between different industries.
You can go across the whole range of natural disasters and find that generally true. Human abuse of our environment make the disaster more likely and likely to be worse, but there’s not a direct involvement nor could you identify a singular entity as the cause.
Unfortunately it’s still all an “act of god” with regard to identifying blame
The only real solution is taxing ahead of time to mitigate an entity’s share of directly caused harm. For example oil drillers are supposed to post a bond to cap the drill site and clean up the hazard. Of course there’s another question about whether that bond is sufficient, or they are able to dodge responsibility, and why the “pro-business” politicians in charge are so ready to wreck the environment for their constituents
I understand and agree with the sentiment, but I mean, aren’t wild fires supposed to be an expected natural disaster? They’re just getting worse due to more ideal conditions?
Yes. And also the explanation for why they’re worsening is not exclusively because of fossil fuels/climate change. That is a factor, but others include terrible forestry practices (including, somewhat paradoxically, fire mitigation and fighting).
Not trying to let oil and gas companies off the hook. It’s just an issue that has a lot of shared blame between different industries.
You can go across the whole range of natural disasters and find that generally true. Human abuse of our environment make the disaster more likely and likely to be worse, but there’s not a direct involvement nor could you identify a singular entity as the cause.
Unfortunately it’s still all an “act of god” with regard to identifying blame
The only real solution is taxing ahead of time to mitigate an entity’s share of directly caused harm. For example oil drillers are supposed to post a bond to cap the drill site and clean up the hazard. Of course there’s another question about whether that bond is sufficient, or they are able to dodge responsibility, and why the “pro-business” politicians in charge are so ready to wreck the environment for their constituents