Climate Change Does Not Explain Bad Government

The recent wildfire that as spread all across Southern California staring from 1/7/2025, which continues raging at time of writing, has gotten several reactions from those across the political spectrum, and neither the left nor the right are saying what actually needs to be pointed out.

The right-wing argument is hardly worth addressing, as it boils down to little more than complaining about DEI. Elon Musk quote tweeted somebody saying that DEI made these fires worse and commented “DEI means people DIE” for example. He was specifically responding to a man named Robby Starbuck, who claimed “DEI was the fire chief’s focus and the department + the city spent money on DEI while dangerous brush hadn’t been cleared and fire hydrants didn’t have water.” His evidence for this is nothing other than a local news interview where the Fire Chief, Kristin Crowley, says she is interested in increasing diversity among the department she runs.

To assume that this means her focus was diversity is to misunderstand why she said. Obviously increasing diversity can be something the department works towards without it overtaking all other tasks it has to do. At time of writing, nobody has produced evidence — as far as I’m aware — of funding which could have been used to prevent this wildfire being spent on DEI. An investigative piece in The Washington Post was…