Friday, February 7, 2025

News and Ideas Worth Sharing

HomeViewpointsLettersDebating arguments heard...

Debating arguments heard on Fox News regarding the Los Angeles fires

If we are going to put causes to this catastrophe, for God's sake, let‘s put it where it belongs, not where Fox News suggests, without any scientific basis, that it is!

To the editor:

I recently heard someone on Fox opine the following about the horrors in Los Angeles: “Allocating focus and money on DEI, saving the smelt, and crazy environmentalists’ land-management policies isn’t the way to get dams, reservoirs, or functional fire hydrant systems.“

Each one of these things is debatable at best, and wrong headed for sure.

1. On DEI

I think the thought of the right here is that because the Los Angeles public wanted more diversity in their public services, they picked less competent people than they might have. The implication, as I understand it, is that white men would have done a better job.

Not to be insulting to the whole profession, but being in the fire department is hardly designing rockets or computers. It is hauling around hoses and driving fire engines. Are you sure that because people are Black or Hispanic or female they can’t haul hoses as well as a white man? Indeed, it seems to me a fire department would be better off choosing from the best of people who are Black or Hispanic or white or male or female.

And even if only white males can do this job best, is it not a good thing to want to include people who have for decades been disallowed to be part of our broader middle class? It is in itself a good, it seems to me, to want to open up society to people who have too often not been welcome. It is a good Impulse, however effective it has been.

2. On “saving the smelt”

Many years ago, people were concerned about the loss of animal diversity. When this was an active concern, environmentalists did what they could to stop species from being destroyed by dams and other human activities. I don’t know if it had deleterious effects on a water resource, but let’s assume that it did. One of the challenges of being human is to balance different virtues. It is a good to have water for fires and for human consumption. It is also a good to want to protect the world’s species. We have destroyed a lot of the world’s species, which is bad not only for the world but for us in various ways. More species, more variations: better globe. It seems to me a good to do this. Now, if the balance with water resource was off, which it might have been here, the attempt was another kind of good.

For a while the fire hydrants were ineffective. What we hear on the radio is that the problem was not that they ran out of water, but rather too much water was being used all at once. There is water in the reservoirs as of today, and the hydrants are once again functioning. This suggests that the problem with the fire hydrants was not the environmentalists but the overtaxing of a system.

3. Here is my real point

The Fox News and conservative beef about environmentalists and DEI seemed to suggest that there was only one good with which we human beings should be concerned. They suggested that being sure of adequate water resources in a catastrophe is the one and only good that should be taken into account. And if you drill down, it looks like the only thing that counts is to protect the humans’ needs, especially those of white men. It seems to me that while human safety and needs (and especially the needs of white males) are values that should be promoted or protected, is this the only value that we human beings should be careful about? Is our safety in a catastrophe the only good? The only thing that counts?

4. Fox News leaves out the obvious problem behind this catastrophe

I don’t want to be overly simple here, but it leaves out urban sprawl. And even more crucial, it leaves out the fact that scientists have been warning about global warming for years and years. The clear cause of global warming is the overuse of petroleum products (e.g., gas, coal, and oil). Global warming is the cause of all this dry weather in California. Global warming is clearly involved in all of the horrific events like hurricanes and overflowing rivers that we have never seen before in such vast numbers. The cause of the overwhelmed fire hydrants is not a mis-allocation of water on behalf of the smelts, it is the goddamn dry and hot weather. And we have contributed to that. The cause of the dry brush and burned territory is not the fire hydrants, but the overwhelmingly dry and hot weather. The cause of the shortness of snow and of water is not the environmentalists but the environment.

If we are going to put causes to this catastrophe, for God’s sake, let‘s put it where it belongs, not where Fox News suggests, without any scientific basis, that it is!

Robert K.C. Forman
Great Barrington

Click here to read The Berkshire Edge’s policy for submitting Letters to the Editor.

spot_img

The Edge Is Free To Read.

But Not To Produce.

Continue reading

Cross-quarter days

We have lost so much in the transformation of these ancient days of honoring, giving thanks, and celebration, now trivialized and commercialized, as is so much of our impoverished culture.

Gratitude and a request for elders

I encourage readers of The Berkshire Edge to help Elder Services of the Berkshires with a donation! It will help to build local resilience into this service in the face of uncertainties emanating from D.C.

Egremont is asking its residents to vote on an incomplete and error-filled revision of the town’s zoning bylaw

The folks pressing ahead with this unfinished product assure us that they will finish the job and fix the mistakes in due course. They call doing that “phase two.” But they can offer no guaranty that “phase two” will happen or that it will look as we are being told it will look.

The Edge Is Free To Read.

But Not To Produce.