OPINION:
It has been almost 18 months since the devastating wildfire that swept the Pacific Palisades section of Los Angeles, killing 12 people and destroying 6,837 buildings.
At the time, pooh-bahs of progressivism rushed to blame climate change. Sen. Bernard Sanders, Vermont independent, slammed President Trump for treating climate change as a hoax instead of “like the existential crisis that it is.”
What really caused the historic conflagration?
Los Angeles officials cut the fire department’s budget by $17.6 million to provide funding for their favorite diversity, equity and inclusion programs, such as giving sterile needles to the homeless.
Fire hydrants were dry because California Gov. Gavin Newsom emptied reservoirs to protect endangered fish. The state also saved money by not regularly clearing away the underbrush that could act as kindling for brushfires.
While the Palisades fire blazed out of control, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was on a junket to Ghana, despite her promise not to travel during her first term as mayor. She hopes her constituents will forget that as she seeks reelection this year. One of her opponents has a campaign ad showing him by a trailer where his Pacific Palisades home once stood.
Another culprit is possible. Jonathan Rinderknecht, a former Uber driver, has been charged with starting the Pacific Palisades fire. Prosecutors say he wanted revenge on the rich.
When he was charged in October, the self-styled proletarian champion told investigators that he resented the rich enjoying their wealth while the rest of us are “basically being enslaved by them.”
In December 2024, Mr. Rinderknecht conducted computer searches of “Free Luigi” (referring to Luigi Mangione, charged with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson) and “Let’s kill all billionaires” — or destroy their homes, at the very least.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if Mr. Sanders’ anti-billionaire rhetoric were the real existential threat?
Yet the left won’t allow reality to interfere with climate change delusions.
Maybe Ms. Bass was so concerned about climate change that she needed a vacation in Ghana to decompress. Perhaps Mr. Newsom was so frazzled thinking about the coming ice age that he forgot to have the underbrush cleared away.
Maybe Mr. Rinderknecht wanted to punish the residents of Pacific Palisades for their oversize carbon footprint.
It is too bad that former Vice President Al Gore’s 20-foot rise in the sea level never happened. That might have put out the fire.
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