SSSdave wrote: I am much against the vast corporate, political, real estate, and financial powers of the world with their steering humanity into endless population growth and development versus a sustainable world with much lower population in harmony with life on our incredible blue water planet of life.
Not sure anyone is doing any steering; Darwin (aka nature) is a cruel ****. A few million years of evolutionary selective pressures has produced a lean, mean re-productive machine. Tolstoy wrote a famous short-story (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kreutzer_Sonata) that addressed the paradox that the intellectual bald ape is also the most promiscuous of species.
Most social, religious and corporate power flows from leveraging some very basic human desires/impulses. Rather than driving or steering behavior, perhaps a more useful analogy is that those in (or seek to gain) power act as 'service stations' to satisfy inherent demand.
In terms of population growth, Calif's size doubled in the last 40+ years, and will do so again in another 40. When we were kids, there were still ranch lands, orchards and uncultivated regions between the Bay area and SoCal. Now, between Oregon and the Bay, LA and SJ, and many points east, there are (new) suburban communities covering these formerly empty areas.
Being a NorCal native, with family still living up there, I'm well aware of the tendency to fight growth. LA, on the other hand, figured out what was happening 150 years ago, and rather than try and stop the inevitable, everyone jumped on board in order to try and get rich. To this day, land use discussions, development plans and personal investment decisions are still dominated by real estate. The cliche that LA is more flash still holds true; it's easier to make RE bank as an ordinary tradesman than be smart and make money in high tech.
The fires are a result of a number of reasons, with the political and scientific drivers subject to much debate. As is usual with any complex problem, there are a multitude of varying inputs and casual factors. But the one thing I assume everyone can agree on is that residential development has moved into areas that have high fire dangers throughout the state. (And the PNW for that matter, including WA & OR.)
Since stopping, stalling and/or preventing this ongoing push is not an option, it leaves open other avenues in which to first enact & maintain preventative measures beforehand, and then have ready response mechanisms in place when they do occur.