My current favorite favorite picture from the southern California wildfires is this one from the NY Times: It is this ironic shot of new hilltop construction in the urban/wilderness interface viewed through the fork of a tree singed in the 2003 wildfires.
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Nice choice of words, especially the “obliviousness” part.
I don’t think $100 oil is inexorable. It would throw the economy into recession so won’t get there.
Instead of intelligent people building homes in more fire-proof areas around there, we have intelligence-proof people cutting down trees (that weren’t burned down yet), removing the bark, nailing the pieces back together, and sticking it right in the middle of the wildfire-spawning capital of the world (I live in Texas, and I am still WAY too aware of these “Santa Ana winds” and the flames they fan every year – aren’t the people who actually live there smarter than that?). What’s next, building thriving metropolises on/near active fault lines, or on top of scenic future landslides, or right on the beach where a tsunami from a Ring of Fire volcano or undersea quake can…nevermind.