By John Leschak
Throughout the entire month of October 2007, Southern California was wracked by wildfires. The fires consumed an area from Los Angeles to San Diego, burning more than 800 square miles (an area 40 times the size of Manhattan), destroying over 2,100 homes, and forcing approximately one million people to flee.
As soon as the fires were over, the search for a villain began. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) quickly located the alleged culprit-a ten-year-old boy. The boy told the police he started the fire by playing with some matches. Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley decided not to file criminal charges against the child.
The debate over the responsibility of this child arsonist diverted public attention from the vital land-use issue: who is responsible for the uncontrolled proliferation of suburbs in these areas where wildfire is so explosive?
According to Mike Davis, professor of urban history at the University of California in Irvine, a lot of the property destroyed by the recent wildfires was built by the Irvine Company, the Orange County real estate giant. After severe firestorms in Southern California in 2003, a coalition of rural residents and environmentalists tried to stop suburban sprawl. They put an initiative on the ballot in San Diego to limit residential density to one home per 100 acres. But the measure was defeated at the polls-Davis claims largely as the result of an opposition campaign funded by real estate companies. Now the real estate business is planning for a reconstruction boom, rebuilding homes in the same places where they rebuilt following the 2003 fires!
Karl Marx wrote in the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, “All facts of great importance in world history occur twice…the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” Californians’ failure to learn from the 2003 wildfires has made the 2007 wildfires farcical, and the attempt to hold a child responsible only accentuates the absurdity of the situation.
Global warming contributed to the wildfires as well as overdevelopment. The dramatic number of mega-fires accords with climate simulations used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The Southwest’s climate is changing. For instance, the pine forests in the San Bernardino Mountains are dying off. IPCC models predicted that mega-fires would increase as forests die out.
The media waged a witchhunt for an arsonist and ended up blaming a 10-year-old child. But the real arsonists are the real estate developers responsible for the uncontrolled building and the politicians who abet them. All of us share in their guilt, too, because we are all responsible for global warming. However, complicity is not inevitable.
The fight against ecological destruction has many fronts. One way to help is through participation in political campaigns to regulate greenhouse gas. Another way to help is through your daily behavior. For instance, when you go to the Student Center for lunch, ask for a china plate-do you really need to have your meal in a plastic container made from petroleum products?
Although this may not seem significant, individual actions can have a major impact on our environment. Just remember: one tree can make a thousand matches but just one match can burn a thousand trees.
John Leschak is a first year law student. You may e-mail him at jlesch2@pride.hofstra.edu