{"id":11527,"date":"2018-11-22T23:20:51","date_gmt":"2018-11-23T07:20:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=11527"},"modified":"2018-11-22T23:20:51","modified_gmt":"2018-11-23T07:20:51","slug":"even-california-cannot-defy-nature-forever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/even-california-cannot-defy-nature-forever\/","title":{"rendered":"Even California Cannot Defy Nature Forever"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ City Journal<\/p>\n<p>California has been clouded under a blanket of smoke for weeks. Stanford University, where\u00a0I work, sent students and faculty home early for Thanksgiving. The campus is more than 200 miles southwest of the 150,000-acre Camp Fire that just incinerated the Sierra Nevada foothill town of Paradise, and yet the entire Bay Area has been buried under collateral haze for days. I am a fifth-generation native Californian and remember many horrific Sierra Nevada fires, but never anything remotely comparable to the blazes of 2018.<\/p>\n<p>Here in Fresno County, in the San Joaquin Valley, positioned between the Coast Range and Sierra Nevada mountains, the stagnant air for weeks has remained as polluted as China\u2019s. When the normal northerlies blew, we were smoked in from the Camp Fire, 250 miles to the north. When the rarer southerlies took over, some of the smoke from the 100,000-acre Woolsey fire in the canyons of Malibu arrived from 230 miles distant.<\/p>\n<p>July and August were nearly as incendiary as November. The huge, 450,000-acre Mendocino County conflagrations, the horrific Shasta-area Carr fire (nearly a half-million acres), and the nearby Ferguson fire in the Madera foothills all combined to make the air nearly unbreathable for two months throughout the Central Valley. Yet Californians in the irrigated center of the state were the lucky ones, breathing smoke rather than seeing fires overwhelm their homes and communities.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.city-journal.org\/california-wild-fires\">Read the full article here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ City Journal California has been clouded under a blanket of smoke for weeks. Stanford University, where\u00a0I work, sent students and faculty home early for Thanksgiving. The campus is more than 200 miles southwest of the 150,000-acre Camp Fire that just incinerated the Sierra Nevada foothill town of Paradise, and yet the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[16,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-2ZV","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8695,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-underbelly-of-the-california-drought\/","url_meta":{"origin":11527,"position":0},"title":"The Underbelly Of The California Drought","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 30, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Eureka It is September in California, year four of a scorching drought. Forest fires are blackening the arid state, from Napa Valley to the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Fly over the High Sierra and about every tenth evergreen below appears dead. Even the high mountain lakes\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;California&quot;","block_context":{"text":"California","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/california\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Almaden Reservoir in San Jose, Calif. (Justin Sullivan\/Getty)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/pic_giant3_040815_SM_California-Drought-Lake-G-500x292.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10849,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/christmas-lessons-from-california\/","url_meta":{"origin":11527,"position":1},"title":"Christmas Lessons from California","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 21, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review \u00a0 Nature this year is predictably not cooperating with California. \u00a0 Rarely has such a naturally rich and scenic region become so mismanaged by so many creative and well-intentioned people. \u00a0 In California, Yuletide rush hours are apparently the perfect time for state workers\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Water&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Water","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/water\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2504,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/green-shovel-ready-stimulus-100-years-ago\/","url_meta":{"origin":11527,"position":2},"title":"Green, Shovel-Ready Stimulus&#8211;100 Years Ago","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 25, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Huntington Lake, Calif. \u2014 Our politicians love soaring platitudes followed by little, if any, action. The more Americans are promised shovel-ready stimulus projects, new sources of power, and other fantasies, the more we accept that bureaucracy, regulations, lawsuits, and impact statements will prevent\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Energy&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Energy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/energy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7177,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/one-california-for-me-another-for-thee\/","url_meta":{"origin":11527,"position":3},"title":"One California for me, another for thee","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 4, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0Tribune Content Agency\u00a0 No place on the planet is as beautiful and as naturally rich as\u00a0California. And few places have become as absurd. Currently, three\u00a0California\u00a0state senators are either under felony indictment or already have been convicted. State Sen.\u00a0Leland Yee\u00a0(D-San Francisco) made a political career out of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Civilization&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Civilization","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/civilization\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/YosemiteValley12-300x224.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":13529,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/optimism-inc-dantes-california-inferno-nine-months-later\/","url_meta":{"origin":11527,"position":4},"title":"Optimism, Inc: Dante\u2019s California Inferno\u2014Nine months later.","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 12, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Two Chimneys Standing after Creek Fire in Sierra National Forest, September 2020 Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Private Papers Two weeks ago, I drove up Route 168 to Huntington Lake, sometimes known as Lakeshore, California.\u00a0 I had not been there since winter. I have a small house up there, at nearly\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 17 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 17 comments","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/optimism-inc-dantes-california-inferno-nine-months-later\/#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/CreekfireTwoChimineysStanding.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/CreekfireTwoChimineysStanding.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/CreekfireTwoChimineysStanding.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/CreekfireTwoChimineysStanding.jpeg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/CreekfireTwoChimineysStanding.jpeg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/CreekfireTwoChimineysStanding.jpeg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2043,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-other-california\/","url_meta":{"origin":11527,"position":5},"title":"The Other California","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 10, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton City Journal In 1973, as I was going through customs in New York after spending the summer bumming around Italy and Greece, the customs agent looked at my passport and said with a Bronx sneer, \u201cBruce Thornton, huh? Is that one of them Hollywood names?\u201d Hearing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Bruce S. Thornton&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11527"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11527"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11530,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11527\/revisions\/11530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}