Make no mistake, the threat from the spread of COVID-19 is massive, horrible and growing. On February 27th, the World Health Organization declared that the virus and the threat of a growing pandemic are now officially a “global health emergency.” As the virus descends into nations with less effective healthcare systems, the mortality and infection rates rise. Even though the numbers in the United States remain modest, the disease is erupting unexpectedly where the source of exposure remains a mystery. Americans, among billions the world over, are clearly unsettled.
Despite this global reality, the Trump administration continues to treat the threat of this highly infectious contagion as an attempt by the Democratic Party to take down the US stock markets to gain political advantage in the coming presidential election. “The coronavirus outbreak’s impact on the world economy grew more alarming on Saturday [2/29], even after President Donald Trump denounced criticism of his response to the threat as a ‘hoax’ cooked up by his political enemies. Skepticism greeted Trump everywhere he turned.
“China's manufacturing plunged in February by an even wider margin than expected after efforts to contain the virus outbreak shut down much of the world's second-largest economy, an official survey showed Saturday [2/29].” Associated Press, February 29th.
Finally understanding that even his evangelical base did not believe Trump’s statements about this virus “hoax,” he held a hastily gathered White House press conference on February 29th, including his coronavirus tsar, Mike “I need something to do” Pence, to assuage the American people. Telling the reporters that he had summoned 50 of America’s top pharmaceutical executives to a White House meeting scheduled for March 2nd, he also said that the United States would have an inoculation for COVID-19 imminently (which is patently untrue as medical professionals have stated repeatedly). He also instituted some additional travel restrictions and advisories relating to nations with recent significant outbreaks of the virus. All this from a man who dramatically defunded the federal team created to deal with pandemics. But the global economic devastation was not remotely reversed by his still-not-credible assurances.
Our stock markets are seriously down because of the “coronavirus adjustment,” but “adjustment” is always the name of that share price game. The popular barometer of the NYSE historical Dow Jones curve tells you that, with regular ups and downs, the overall vector of the US stock market is massively up, regardless of depression, recession or who is in office. That the market has been artificially been bolstered with a massive injection of free cash without any concomitant increase in productivity (the big tax cut), its general upward vector has, at least until now, been a foregone conclusion as the above historical chart proves.
But there is another aspect of this administration’s policies that is rearing its ugly, climate change denying/ignoring, head: the next fire season. Since fires are literally hot and heavy in blue states, notably California, the President continues to blame those states for failing to spend the billions and billions of dollars needed to clear out brush and dead trees from massive Western forests. He always omits that the uncleared brush is equally heavy in the huge tracts of federal lands, over which states have no jurisdiction, that are particularly vast in Western states. The threat of withholding federal aid looms large. And the overall accelerating impact on our economy has yet to reflect the trillions of hard dollar losses that man-induced climate change will impose as our federal government officially ignores the problem. Fires are just part of the problem as Midwestern flooding has recently illustrated.
Even conservative Australia, where climate change had, until recently, been questioned or at least on the back burner, has unequivocally accepted that man-induced climate change is very real and truly much more advanced than they ever imagined. Their questions, you should pardon the expression, vaporized. But “This is Us”: California is one of those blue states facing a combination of another bout with low rainfall, dry forests and deep federal animosity. The tea leaves out west are particularly disturbing. Even after the massive rains from earlier this season.
“California is set to conclude one of its driest Februaries in recorded history, elevating fears the state’s always-unpredictable fire season could arrive early this year — if March doesn’t bring some wet relief… February is typically a prime month for Pacific storms to produce much of the Sierra Nevada snowpack — moisture that sustains wildlife, delays wildfire season and serves as a water bank for thirsty cities and farms. But those storms didn’t arrive in February, with a state survey Thursday [2/27] showing the snowpack was 46% of average.
“After an unusually wet winter last year, many of California’s reservoirs are well above their season average, so state water managers have few fears about near-term shortages. Yet if the coming months remain relatively dry, the state will be dependent on an uncertain future to prevent the state from swinging back into drought conditions.
“‘All it takes is an extreme atmospheric river to end up in a high-water situation even if the broader season is dry,’ said state hydrologist Michael Anderson, who added that a storm is expected to hit the state in the next couple of weeks. ‘The two extremes can now coexist in a warmer climate.’
“Historical data, however, suggest there is just a small likelihood of what some call a ‘March Miracle.’ Over the last 14 decades, only five of the 20 driest Februaries in downtown Los Angeles were followed by Marches with above-average rainfall, said Bill Patzert, a retired climatologist for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada-Flintridge…
“Because of the enduring dryness, Cal Fire will probably begin staffing its seasonal firefighters and inmate hand crews earlier than last year, when an exceptionally soggy winter was capped with a surprise storm in May, said Mike Mohler, spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
“A new slate of fuel-reduction and fire break projects are lined up for 2020 to continue last year’s surge of work aimed at protecting rural communities and evacuation routes. ‘It’s a double-edged sword — lots of rain, lots of brush; no rain, dry brush,’ Mohler said. ‘We hate to preach doom and gloom, but it’s the reality we live in… The writing of what could come is already on the wall’… A six-acre brush fire broke out at San Bruno Mountain State and County Park south of San Francisco on Friday [2/28], the remnants of a prescribed fire in Mendocino County grew out of control earlier this week, and there was a 100-acre fire near Lake Tahoe in mid-February.
“After back-to-back catastrophic fire years, 2019 ended up being the quietest year of wildfires in California since 2011, possibly because the state’s largest utilities proactively shut down their power lines most vulnerable to wind events. The strategy triggered blackouts for millions of customers but also potentially prevented some blazes from igniting during high winds.
“In Southern California, where the fire season typically begins at the end of summer, the uneventful winter just gives the landscape that much more time to dry out, officials said. When the month is over, this February will probably rank as the 10th-driest on record for downtown Los Angeles, said meteorologist Joe Sirard of the National Weather Service.” Joseph Serna and Paul Duginski for the February 29th Los Angeles Times.
Climate change horribles tend to compound and increase exponentially in some areas when they are ignored. And maybe we do not react as intensely as we do to a quick and unexpected shock to the system like the COVID-19 outbreak, but the damage that will result by our continuing not to react to climate change issues is so much, much, much, much worse.
I’m Peter Dekom, living in California, and for those in the Western, fire prone United States, “brace, brace, brace!”
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