California, the Golden State, home to Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Napa Valley, Glitz, Glamour,

and now Blackouts. In 2019, California became the first state ever to intentionally deny electricity

to its own citizens. No power for your home, your Tesla, your cell phone, or maybe your oxygen tank.

This is California we're talking about. Not some impoverished third-world country, California,

if it were a sovereign nation, it would be the fifth largest economy in the world, ahead of the UK and

France. But in the hot, dry months of late summer and early fall, it can no longer provide electricity

to its own citizens. It has to shut down its aging power lines or risk starting another catastrophic

fire. In 2018, the town of Paradise burned to the ground. Over 10,000 homes were destroyed. 85 people

died. In 2017, the Redwood fire killed nine people. California has always had wildfires,

but now the fire threat is worse than ever. Why? For the answer, we should look to one of the states

leading citizens, Leonardo DiCaprio. The reason these wildfires have worsened is because of climate change.

Case close? Well, not quite. But Leo isn't wrong. Climate change has made the problem worse.

He's just not right in the way he thinks he is. Let's get into it.

Long before global warming became climate change, Californians had to deal with fires.

The hot, bone-dried summer and fall winds, thick forests, and dense brush that cover good portions

of the state made sure of that. As the state's population grew, the citizens, always aware of

fire risk, took steps to mitigate that risk, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. First,

there were large-scale logging operations. These helped then the forest. Then there were controlled

burns. Fires purposely set to clear areas of brush in fire zones which were then quickly

extinguished. As the influence of the environmental movement grew more pronounced at the end of the

last century and into this one, the state's policy changed. First, new regulations sharply

curtailed logging operations. Cutting down trees for lumber was depicted as almost an act of

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