I hope your home and business are safe—so many have been destroyed, most shockingly in California wildfires.
California has always been subject to wildfires. But it doesn’t take an overwhelming force of nature to destroy you, or our ability to defend against nature. California leads the nation in regulatory restrictions, as the figure shows. These include restrictions on human use of water, which impaired firefighting ability.
Fires pour pollutants into the atmosphere, but while California’s poor forest management provided fuel for devastating fires, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) has enacted increasingly stringent rules on vehicle emissions. Most heavy vehicles with an engine manufactured before 2010 are not allowed to go anywhere. The latest rule change would impact roughly 200,000 buses and more than 70,000 trucks currently in operation within the state. California’s diesel engine ban mandate is set to go into effect in 2035. The effect of this ban on the cost of living, and health, has not been determined.
Every regulator destroys 138 private-sector jobs, according to an Auburn University study, and each dollar in a regulator’s salary destroys $112 of economic output. Regulatory costs devour $5 trillion, or one-fifth of our entire economy. This is all in the guise of protecting health and safety, but what is the evidence for this outcome?
Published research often claims that a regulation will save thousands or millions of lives. But much of the research claims display the “Bunnies in the Sky” phenomenon: If you look long and hard enough at the clouds, you will see something.
There is a crisis of irreproducible (false) findings. For example, claims of deleterious effects of small particulates (PM2.5) on all-cause mortality, heart attacks, or asthma attacks cannot be substantiated. Neither can most claims about COVID measures such as masking.
California fires might force the ruling regime to calculate the potential cost of their supposedly well-intentioned impositions.
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