How the Left Turned California Into a Paradise Lost – WSJ

After the November election, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced his plans to Trump-proof the Golden State. How about fire-proofing? Los Angeles s horrific fires are exposing the costs of its progressive follies, which even wealthy liberals in their Palisades palaces can t escape.

Start with its environmental obsessions. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in 2019 sought to widen a fire-access road and replace old wooden utility poles in the Topanga Canyon abutting the Palisades with steel ones to make power lines fire- and wind-resistant. In the process, crews removed an estimated 182 Braunton s milkvetch plants, an endangered species.

The utility halted the project as state officials investigated the plant destruction. More than a year later, the California Coastal Commission issued a cease-and-desist order, fined the utility $2 million, and required mitigation for the project s impact on the species. This involved replacing nonnative vegetation with plants native to the state. You have to chuckle at the contradiction: California s progressives want to expel foreign flora and fauna but provide a sanctuary for illegal immigrants.

Since the milkvetch requires wildfires to propagate, the only way to boost its numbers is to let the land burn. A cynic might wonder if environmentalists interfered with fire prevention in hope of evicting humans from what they view as the plant s rightful habitat. To radical environmentalists, every human is a colonizer.

via www.wsj.com

Allysia Finely.