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Wildfires are raging in Southern California, driven by unusually high winds. There was a report that the Getty Villa, a wonderful museum, had been destroyed. That report turned out to be wrong, at least so far, but only just:

Many homes have gone up in smoke, and 30,000 Los Angeles residents have been told to evacuate. Donald Trump, never one to stay on the sidelines during a crisis, says that California’s Governor, Gavin Newsom, is to blame for the destructive fires:

Donald Trump has blamed Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, for the ongoing wildfires raging across Los Angeles.

The US president-elect said the Democrat was to blame for a lack of water being available in the state.

“[Newsom] refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snowmelt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way,” Mr Trump said on his Truth social account.

More:

Is all of that true? It makes sense. California’s resource management has been awful for many years, as a result of the dominant influence of environmentalists.

Let’s start by talking generally about wildfires, destructive phenomena that have existed since time immemorial. Because of improved forest management techniques, involving clearing out flammable brush, etc., the number of acres burned by wildfires each year in the U.S. has declined by around 80% from the 1920s and 1930s:

But you will notice that in recent years, the acres burned have been creeping upward, although nowhere near the level of decades ago. Why is that? If you pay attention, headlines about out of control wildfires are, these, days, generally–I am tempted to say, almost always–from California. Most other states have continued to follow sound forest management practices, while California has been captured by radical environmentalists. The result? More wildfires in California.

So Trump likely is right with regard to the water restoration act to which he refers. Beyond that, liberal control of California, as currently manifested in Gavin Newsom, has been responsible for increased wildfires at a time when globally, wildfires are at an all-time low, and in the U.S., they are down dramatically from 80 years ago.