Maslow Comes For California Policymakers
We must “protect this house” by prioritizing our safety.
The base of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs includes, among other things, air and shelter. The job of government is to ensure our basic needs are met, the most extreme being protection from invaders (human or otherwise) so we can breathe and have shelter. Even the most virulent libertarians agree.
While the usual suspects continue to incorrectly identify climate change as the primary cause for the Los Angeles fires, what makes this so gut-wrenching is that it was so tragically preventable. To suggest that we could have done nothing, or the only way to address it is to cut our carbon emissions, is an insult to Californians no matter their political disposition. Just as I began mashing the keyboard on this very topic, The Wall Street Journal’s Allysia Finley and the Editorial Board of The Free Press both scooped me. Nellie Bowles also nailed it.
I’ve lived in California for most of my adult life — nearly ten years in Los Angeles, eight in Oakland, and five in Petaluma — bearing witness to stunning achievements and suffering from our follies. We epitomize what it means to boom and to bust, from the gold rush to the internet bubble, massive droughts to atmospheric-river-driven mudslides, and beyond.
What makes today in California so fascinating is how we are living the boom and bust duality in real time. A few examples related to our fire reality:
- The Los Angeles Fire Department is the best in the world at brush and chaparral fire fighting. Yet our mitigation policies at the wildland urban interface in Southern California are some of the worst, for too many reasons to explain here.
- Californians drive EVs in droves in an effort to curb climate change. Yet we don’t take basic precautions to safeguard against fire dangers next to the very garages where we park these cars which, it turns out, have little relative climate impact.*
- Environmental activists and California politicians have worked tirelessly to protect endangered animals and habitats. These same efforts have resulted in a steep opportunity cost, endangering human life and costing us hundreds of billions of dollars.
- With our limited resources Californians have chosen costly climate policies that have delivered…what exactly, on what time scale (genuine question)? Simultaneously, China continues to build coal-fired plants and invest in leapfrog nuclear and fusion technology, having their cake and eating it too.
*According to my good friend ChatGPT, California’s EV growth has offset ~6.9 million metric tons of CO₂ per year while China’s new coal plant emissions (just the new ones) add up to ~150–200 million metric tons of CO₂ per year. Let that sink in.
There are many areas where I have applauded policy action in California, where we have led the nation. And while I am an abundance-minded individual, we live in a resource-constrained world, and we must prioritize.
And prioritization is precisely where we as Californians have failed.
We are not electing officials that prioritize the air we breathe and the safety of our homes from catastrophic fire. It’s not news, but given the political orientation of the Los Angeles and San Francisco electorate and their media consumption habits, I’m afraid many accept this as reality rather than a political choice.
We need to welcome more political diversity to challenge the mind-boggling 50-year political monopoly in the California State Senate, and we need to do it now. (I won’t go into the litany of Conservative critiques here, you can read about them in The Free Press and The Wall Street Journal above.)
We need not ideas, but instead competence in execution of what we know works, and ownership over it all.
Turns out not only our livelihood, but our very lives, depend on it.
So when we have the opportunity to engage with a California policymaker or agency employee, anytime or anywhere, the first question should head straight for the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid:
What are we doing to protect the homes we live in, and the air we breathe?
