eclipsenow
Scripture is God's word, Science is God's works
- Dec 17, 2010
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Yes - the 2019 fires that smothered Sydney for 6 months were horrendous.This is par for the course in bushfire zones in Australia. And we used to have 5 levels of warnings:
low-moderate
high
very high
severe
extreme
You'd think that 'Extreme' would cover the worst case scenarios. But a few years ago it was thought that the dangers had increased to such an extent that we needed another level. So 'Catastrophic' is now the highest warning.
These new climate mega-fires are something to behold.
I read somewhere that to dry the bush to fire-ready used to take 6 months of unusually hot weather back in the 1930's. But in some of today's mega-heatwaves it can achieve the same thing in about 2 weeks!
Now getting back to fire and drought risks in LA.
I know this is highly idealistic - but I'm a fan of Ecocities. As well as the energy transition and electrifying everything and tweaking agriculture - society should have a long hard look at how we build our dwellings. Americans and us Aussies use DOUBLE the oil of the average American - and it's all due to living in suburbia.
This short 3 minute video sums up the vibe - but there are many models of New Urbanism / AKA Ecocity / AKA Solarpunk! (Even more extreme!)
Basically - if LA rezoned around Ecocity principles and let natural attrition of the housing stock expire, and concentrated inhabitants in "more European than Europe" urban living - LA could collapse back in on itself over the next generation and become a more and more attractive place to live! (There are different PROFITABLE ways to fund all this - as eventually living on 20% or even 10% of the land costs governments far less with vastly less roads and gutters etc to maintain.)
Think about the extra WATER that would save for firefighting - and how much easier it would be to protect a smaller amount of land!
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