Over 460,000 acres have been burned by wild fires in southern California over the past few days. Wild fires that, at least in part, may have been the work of arsonists. The reward for information leading to a conviction now stands at $250,000 while damages from the inferno are estimated at over $1 Billion.
The fires, which have thus far resulted in at least 7 deaths and almost 2,000 lost homes, are dominating the 24-hour news cycle while Congress works in vain toward once again sending SCHIP legislation to the President’s desk, a nominee for the seat of Attorney General stands before a confirmation committee, and unprecedented, unilateral sanctions have been placed on Iran in the lead-up to now inevitable military strikes. Also in the news is the bleakest environmental report ever issued by anyone coming from the U.N., and the White House-redacted testimony of the head of the Centers for Disease Control to the U.S. Senate on the effects of global climate change on public health (don’t worry about West Nile though, the White House says that people die from the cold too). But I digress.
I’m taking even odds that these fires, if they were indeed ignited by arsonists, will serve as the latest milestone in the Bush Administration’s quest to consolidate power in the unitary executive. Forget talk of global warming, or climate change, or peak oil, or even collapsing credit markets. The only word we’ll need to know for the foreseeable future is ecoterrorism. I fear we’ll come to know it all too well.
