California Burning

By SETH SANDRONSKY

As summer gave way to fall, climate-change fueled wildfires engulfed California, with the fifth biggest economy in the world and the most populous state in the US. With 13 wildfires at press time, the impacts have been broad and deep in the Golden State.

Wildfires disrupt the economy. Employers and employees alike fled for safety after the authorities called for mandatory evacuations. Businesses closed permanently and temporarily. Havoc ruled and reaped widespread anxiety among those who fled wildfires due to high winds and drought-parched landscapes. Blame climate change.

At press time, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom had waived the one-week waiting period to get unemployment insurance benefits. He had made a statewide emergency declaration as wildfires spread in Northern and Southern California, and utility-directed power shutoffs from Pacific Gas & Electric grew. Millions of Californians lost power.

That is not all. Apparently, PG&E power lines fell down in Sonoma County north of San Francisco, also known as wine country for its grape growing, sparking the Kincade Fire. The resulting ash, fire and smoke disrupted migrant workers from their labor in the fields.

Wildfires also disrupt the ecology upon which all living things depend. Fetuses, babies, kids and seniors are at-risk from worsening air quality during wildfires, according to scientists. These health risks do not grab headlines the way that blazing hillsides and homes do, as people evacuate in their cars, clogging freeways and streets. Climate change from the burning of fossil fuels is a corporate crime that threatens human civilization with extinction.

Calls for a public option for PG&E, an investor-owned utility, came from many. One prominent figure backing the pubic option was Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is running for president on the Democratic ticket. Gov. Newsom had also threatened to make PG&E a publicly owned utility.

However, Gov. Newsom took campaign donations of $208,000 from PG&E. After his election, the governor signed legislation to use public money to bail out investor-owned utilities such as PG&E. That action called into question the governor’s talk left and walk right politics.

PG&E filed for reorganization in federal bankruptcy court under Chapter 11 on January 29, 2019, due in part to its 2018 California wildfire losses, according to environmental journalist Dan Bacher. Is PG&E too big to fail like the big banks that faced failure when the housing bubble burst and their mortgage-backed securities crashed, leading to the Great Recession?

Dan Berman is author of “Death on the Job: Occupational Health and Safety Struggles in the United States”. “The great comparison, which the regulators at the California Public Utilities Commission will never acknowledge is public versus private ownership,” he said in an email to The Progressive Populist. “Public power, like public schools and public libraries is socialism American-style, and it works for us. PG&E and their allies have fought its spread with millions of our ratepayer dollars.”

Meanwhile, California wildfires are a face of the climate change crisis. There are scores of others, from the Amazon to the Arctic, on planet earth.

Seth Sandronsky lives and works in Sacramento. He is a journalist and member of the Pacific Media Workers Guild. Email sethsandronsky@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, December 1, 2019

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