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March 11, 2025 - Epoch Times
22:56
The Causes of California’s Devastating Fires and How They Could Have Been Prevented: Edward Ring
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Time Text
The fires themselves are pretty much out.
There's a few smoldering remains, but the trouble has just begun.
It's going to be very hard to get everything rebuilt in Los Angeles.
Edward Ring is Director of Water and Energy Policy for the California Policy Center.
They don't know yet how many people died.
They don't know exactly how many homes are destroyed.
But it's well over 10,000 homes that have been just...
Burnt to the ground.
You can't possibly convey this with enough respect to really fulfill just how big this tragedy was for people who have gone through it.
In this episode, we do a deep dive into the California fires.
How did they originate?
Could they have been prevented?
What is the scope of the damage?
And in the aftermath, what should be done?
I'm an environmentalist, but I think that environmentalism itself has gotten out of balance.
It's going too far.
This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek.
Edward Ring, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
Thank you for having me.
We're pretty much in the aftermath of these giant fires in the LA area.
Tell me if that's actually correct, but what is the big challenge right now facing Well, the fires themselves are pretty much out.
There's a few smoldering remains, but the trouble has just begun.
I mean, this is the acute catastrophe that we've seen.
It's a tragedy.
I can't really express in words how bad it must be for the people that have gone through it.
But it's going to be very hard to get everything rebuilt in Los Angeles.
The amount of...
It's the kind of permitting that you have to get, you know, in a normal situation, let's say where there is no fire and the sewers and the water mains and the power lines and the gas lines are all intact.
You know, it still takes on average about three years.
To go through the full permit process to build a house in Los Angeles County.
So imagine how much more complicated that process is going to be now when not only do you have an avalanche of applications that these agencies are going to receive, they're going to be handling a volume of requests that's unprecedented,
but they're also, of course, going to be dealing with all of the things that Have to be managed in the aftermath of a fire, all of the debris, all of the reconstruction of the infrastructure surrounding these homes.
So this is a challenge that's just begun, and it's going to be especially difficult in Los Angeles County.
So surely there's a way to fast track this in this kind of extreme scenario.
Well, we hope so.
I think the latest That I just saw was that Mayor Bass is thinking about involving a contractor to go in and sort of reconstruct blocks of housing.
I'm not sure.
You know, it's very early.
We're just hearing about this and we don't know exactly what she means by that.
But that doesn't strike me at first glance as the most desirable direction.
What ideally should happen is If you have architects that are certified that are putting forward plans that are basically identical to what was destroyed for the replacement home, maybe with some allowances for maybe a higher ceiling or a slightly enlarged footprint for the home, but something that's substantially the same, submitted by a certified architect, it should just be permitted.
It should sail through all of the...
Various agencies that have a hand in these approvals because you're just replacing what had been there and what had been there was fine.
They also have to waive some of the new requirements.
You can't have an affordable home or you can't, well, nothing's affordable in California, but you can't get closer to an affordable home if you have to put in a gas line and put in solar panels on the roof.
So all of these new requirements should either be waived for replacement housing or minimized.
We can hope that President Trump is going to be able to apply pressure on the city to pursue solutions that would be faster and involve a more diverse assortment of contractors instead of some kind of centrally planned solution, which seems to be the direction they're going in.
But we have to wait and see.
Edward, give me a sense of the size and scope of the devastation.
Well, it's unbelievable.
It's unbelievable.
I actually traveled down there on Friday.
I was invited to the president's roundtable and press conference.
So I kind of had a pretty intimate glimpse of not only what's going on down there, but also the response, at least, from the federal government so far.
And the first thing I noticed was I couldn't get an Uber from Los Angeles International Airport to Pacific Palisades.
It said no service.
And that was my first inkling that something was very different.
I ended up getting a taxi.
I just gave them the address.
We started driving and we got, I guess, to within about five miles of the destination.
And we started seeing burned homes here and there along Sunset Boulevard in the foothills of West Los Angeles.
And then we started seeing Humvees and military police stationed at intersections.
And then we came to a checkpoint.
Where there was a whole bunch of soldiers, and they said, you can't go any further.
So I presented my identification, and they checked with the Secret Service and said, all right, you can go through, but your driver can't go through.
And we ended up getting a motorcycle escort for the driver, and that took us, now we go into the burnscape.
I mean, from that point on, everything was burned.
And this went for a couple of miles, where on both sides of the road, all you saw was, Hulks of cars, burned out hulks, in some cases melted portions of the car and chimneys, you know, and here and there a tree or a shrub that was just scorched, you know, with no leaves left, just charred branches.
So that was, you know, a devastating thing to see.
It sounds a little bit trite.
You can't possibly, you know, convey this with enough respect.
To really fulfill just how big this tragedy was for people who have gone through it.
They don't know yet how many people died.
They don't know exactly how many homes are destroyed.
But it's thousands.
It's well over 10,000 homes that have been just burnt to the ground.
At this point, given everything you know, how would you characterize the cause of the fire or the causes?
Well, the cause of the fire, you know, there's the spark that started the fire, and I don't think they're certain.
There's already lawsuits being filed saying that it was caused by a power line.
You know, when you get Santa Ana winds blowing at 50 to 100 miles an hour, which, by the way, is not a unique event that happens in Los Angeles periodically, almost every year there's Santa Ana winds that are very strong wind coming from inland.
And some years they're more severe than others.
This was a bad year, but there were bad years 100 years ago.
But you're blowing the trees around, so even if you've trimmed very responsibly, you can still have a tree that's going to get knocked over by the wind, and it's going to hit the power line.
And what really should be done is those power lines should be put underground in any fire.
But that's one of the possible causes.
You know, 50 percent of the reported fires in Los Angeles, according to members of the fire department, apparently are caused by homeless encampments where they, you know, it's January.
They're trying to stay warm and they'll set up camps in the canyons, in the vacant lots and so forth.
So that's another potential cause.
And then there could be some accident.
Accidents cause fires.
Arson causes fires.
There's policies that could be changed and might largely eliminate that potential cause of fires as well as solve a lot of other problems like helping these people get their lives back.
But ultimately, you're still going to have fires.
And the question then is, you know, how can you mitigate the fuel that these fires consume so they won't be as severe?
And then when they do start, how do you fight them?
I think the bigger issue is how do you mitigate the fuel?
You know, back 100 years ago, they used to graze sheep in the Santa Monica Mountains, and there would be fires that would inevitably blow through there, but they wouldn't be as severe.
Edward, we're going to take a quick break, and we'll be right back.
And we're back with Edward Ring, Director of Water and Energy Policy for the California Policy Center.
Well, so let me speak to this.
In another lifetime, I was a biologist.
I went to my graduate work I did at a school that was known for its forestry department, and I've taken classes talking about this.
So, you know, most areas have a fire cycle.
Over some period of time, a few hundred years perhaps, an entire area will burn.
However, if you stop that fire cycle in some way, the brush will build up and you can get these super fires if you're not actually managing the forest.
This is from Forestry 101. How does that fit into this equation?
That equation applies very obviously with our conifer forests.
Because there you have marketable timber and the private sector could simply responsibly log those forests and you would have a lot less of these super fires because they would be going in there and doing the thinning.
You either have to thin the forests or you have to let them burn.
If you do neither...
Exactly what you described is what happens.
A lot of these property owners, and you can see this, it's coming to light now because there's more attention being paid on it.
But for years, they've been clamoring for the right to go into those canyons adjacent to their homes and clear out the dead brush, or at least to get the county to do it.
But what happens is most of the money, public money that would go to brush clearing and private money, if you're trying to acquire the permits, it all goes to either The process, the application process, or litigation.
There's a lot of environmentalist litigation to stop some of this.
And there's regulations like the California Air Resources Board.
It's very hard to get a burn permit through the California Air Resources Board, which is very ironic when you think about the amount of filth that got belched up into the air from these fires.
If you do these small fires, do small prescribed burns, You do grazing.
You do mechanical thinning.
You can bring the fuel load down.
Now, having said that, we have to acknowledge that, you know, unless you just strip the canyons bare, which nobody thinks is a good idea, there's going to be fuel and there's going to be fires.
It's just the Santa Anas are going to blow.
There's going to be vegetation in these pretty dry.
You know, it's an arid climate.
Certain times a year, you're going to have severe fire danger.
But those fires would not be as severe as the ones that we just experienced, because they would have cut the fuel load by, you know, a half or by two-thirds, and there just wouldn't have been enough to burn.
And they still would have been healthy landscapes, which I think escapes a lot of the...
I think a lot of the environmentalists who look at this have a biased point of view.
And one of the things that we really, really need to do is have alternative land management Plans proposed to offer another way to manage these canyons.
What we're up against is technology.
If you can detect a genomic variant in a lizard, for example, you can say that lizard is Endangered because that genomic variant only exists in Coldwater Canyon in Los Angeles County, right?
It's the same analogy applies to things like PFAS, the persistent chemicals in water.
We now have the ability to measure PFAS down to parts per trillion.
And so all of a sudden we have to screen to the parts per trillion because we've developed the technology to measure the parts per trillion.
So we're in this race with technology where the environmentalist community is taking advantage, and I don't mean that in a cynical way, I'm just saying they're using technology to identify.
You know, subspecies and subspecies genetically, and they're using it to identify chemicals at a parts per trillion level and regulating on that basis.
And there's no end to that.
I mean, at some point, we have to step back, and we need other experts to get involved with these analyses to say, you know, that's going too far.
That's beyond what is an appropriate balance between what we need for the environment and what we need for public health and what we can afford and what's actually necessary and reasonable.
You have done quite a bit of thinking about what is good for the environment in your work.
And actually, I want to take this opportunity for you just to tell us about your background.
And when you say the environmentalist, you yourself aren't an environmentalist, I guess, by that token.
Please explain.
I think that the environmentalist movement is absolutely vital.
And in California, we got lead out of gasoline in the 1960s and 70s.
You couldn't even see the hills five miles away in Los Angeles or the Santa Clara Valley.
And those kinds of advances were absolutely necessary.
You know, they were about to fill in the San Francisco Bay in the 1960s.
There are cities on the bay, Redwood Shores, Foster City, it's all landfill.
And they were going to go ahead and fill it up, you know, and I'm glad they didn't.
You know, so those kinds of things are very important.
The California Condor was saved, and they were down to like...
25 birds, something like that.
And they took them all into captivity, did a captive breeding program, and they finally started releasing them again.
They spent millions and millions of dollars doing that.
And I'm glad they did.
You know, we got about 500 of them now flying around in the wild.
They're the most beautiful, majestic birds.
But we have to acknowledge that at some point, you know, like, let's take mountain lions.
Mountain lions were endangered in California.
They were down to, I think, around 600 of them.
They estimate now that the counts are well over 6,000, 7,000 mountain lions roaming around.
Do we need mountain lions in every single habitat where they can thrive?
Do we need them in the suburbs of Pasadena?
You know, the Santa Monica Mountains in Bel Air, Beverly Hills, Pacific Palisades.
I mean, where do you say, all right, mountain lions?
And, you know, I love mountain lions.
They're beautiful.
You know, it's an emotional thing.
It's a very emotional argument when somebody says, you know, we've got to protect these mountain lions.
And you look at the photographs of these animals, you know.
Yeah, I'm an environmentalist, but I think that environmentalism itself has gotten out of balance.
It's going too far.
And I think it's being dominated a lot by special interests nowadays.
What else needs to happen to move forward now?
To try to answer your question in detail, it's an overwhelming list of things that California does that nobody else does.
Or, you know, maybe Massachusetts does and New York does.
But, you know, you go to Texas, you want a building permit.
I was talking to a controller for a land developer.
California, in Texas, a few years ago.
And he said, yeah, we had to pay, our building permit was $2,500.
And we were astonished, you know, because in California, it's anywhere from 50 to 100, or even over $100,000.
And we said, $2,500 per home?
And he goes, no, no, no, that was for the whole subdivision.
You know, and they can put their plans forward in Texas and get approval in weeks.
Sometimes days.
And in California, it can take decades.
It can literally take decades to build a subdivision in California.
You're litigating and you're jumping through hoops perpetually and spending for, if it's a big, let's say it's a subdivision with, you know, 600 homes, you will spend decades and you will spend hundreds of millions of dollars trying to get approval to build it.
You know, the list is overwhelming.
The California Environmental Quality Act is probably the one that everybody talks about the most.
And in 1970, when that was passed, it was the first of its kind in the nation.
And all it said was, put together a statement when you apply for a building.
If you have an impact on the environment, describe what it is and describe what you're going to do about it.
And people would turn in two or three-page documents.
You know, it was reasonable.
There were precautions that people had to take.
Now, the California Environmental Quality Act requires documents that can be, you know, volumes.
And they have to go through a lead agency.
I have a flowchart I posted showing the process.
And sometimes there's more than one lead or so-called responsible agency.
But, you know, you have to get that thing through.
The California Air Resources Board, you have to get it through the Coastal Commission if it's within five miles of the coast.
You've got to go through, like the responsible agency may be the county, so you've got to go there.
And you have all these agencies that have to sign off on it.
And at every stage in the process, any third-party attorney.
Not somebody with standing in the community who maybe they don't want a subdivision on the hillside next to their home.
You know, that person would have standing.
No, it can be anybody.
There are law firms in other states that, you know, just fly into California because it's such a positive.
And this goes back to crony environmentalism.
It's a business model.
Have you heard of Sue and Settle?
During the Obama administration, that really got out of control, where environmentalist groups would sue a...
The Environmental Protection Agency over some alleged misconduct that's going on on a piece of land or with a manufacturing plant or whatever, and the EPA would immediately settle and give them $100 million.
You know, it's a business model.
We've got to streamline the process to rebuild, and we've got to start managing our forests and our wildlands in a way that is going to reduce the fuel load.
And we need to invest in practical water and energy infrastructure in the state instead of all of these heavily subsidized experiments.
Edward, this has been an absolutely fascinating discussion for me.
I've learned a ton.
Any final thoughts as we finish?
California is a state where they equate sustainability with scarcity.
They want to ration water.
They want to get our water consumption down even further.
They want to be super energy efficient.
And there's nothing wrong with either of those things.
There's nothing wrong with conservation and efficiency.
But it goes too far, and then it becomes an economic drain.
And there is a model for our state which would, instead of recognizing scarcity as our only path to sustainability, let's look for ways to sustainably...
Create abundance and let's be realistic about what the rest of the world is willing to do.
Because if California wants to set an example to the world, it's got to be an example that people are going to follow.
So that would be, for example, let's not close down all of our natural gas power plants.
Let's instead retrofit them to use the absolute.
State-of-the-art combined cycle technologies where we can get, you know, 70-plus percent efficiency in terms of the natural gas going into the generating plant and the electricity coming out.
Because a lot of these plants, especially the peakers that they made to turn on and off to cover for renewable energy, you know, they're only 30 percent efficient.
So you could, like, double or more the efficiency of these plants.
If they're trying to develop more energy for the grid, let's say in Jakarta, they're not going to...
They can install a bunch of solar panels and batteries because it costs too much and it takes up too much space, but they would retrofit their natural gas power plant.
So those kinds of choices are choices that Californians should be making if they want to set an example for the world and if we're not doing this.
To set an example for the world, it's irrelevant.
We're only 1% of the world's energy consumption here in California.
So whatever we do to our own population in terms of being on the bleeding edge and making everyone pay so much more for all of our necessities and creating all this scarcity isn't going to change the world.
It's just going to make us poorer.
So we have to think about what kind of solutions, things like advanced hybrids instead of all EV, things that...
People in the rest of the world are going to want to emulate.
That's where we should be focusing our investment and our innovation.
And I'm hoping that Californians are going to sort of realign behind an abundance agenda instead of a scarcity agenda.
Well, Edward Ring, it's such a pleasure to have had you on.
Well, thank you very much.
Thank you all for joining Edward Ring and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders.
I'm your host, Janja Kellek.
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