Addressing California Wildfires

Floor Speech

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Mr. BENTZ. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for allowing me to join this Special Order today and discuss this horrid and tragic situation in Southern California, truly a national emergency.

Note that I call this a national emergency. Why? Because soon Congress will be sending hundreds of billions of dollars to California to help clean up this mess and rebuild.

The most basic level of common sense demands that we not send billions upon billions to California without first looking carefully at the causes of this catastrophe, and when they are identified, making sure these causes will be addressed and resolved.

The sad benefit that will come from understanding the cause of these southern California fires and also of understanding why California's fire protection systems failed isn't limited to California. Every State is facing hotter and dryer conditions. Every State must do a far better job adapting to these conditions. We need to look at what causes these horrific fires, what they did wrong or what we do wrong in trying to put them out, and then apply those lessons accordingly.

You might ask why these questions were not asked and answered in any of the other fires that we have been suffering that were referred to by Congressman LaMalfa a few minutes ago. We have certainly had enough up in Oregon and northern California, but people in positions of authority perhaps haven't been listening. Perhaps it is because those affected didn't have the political clout or perhaps the actions that needed to be taken such as cleaning up our forests are viewed as politically incorrect.

There is little doubt that this time around those who have been hurt in southern California are politically powerful, and they can do something about this, and we want them to. That means doing something about adapting to warmer, hotter, and dryer.

There is a separation, I guess, in how we approach our response to changing climate. One approach is to invest billions, as California has done, in mitigation, that is reducing CO2, and the other is to recognize it is going to stay this way for a very long time.

It was said by members of the climate commission at Oregon State University that if we stopped all CO2 production today, our climate would not improve for between 30 and 40 years. During this period of time, we are going to see a repeat of what we are seeing in southern California unless we do something about it.

What is that something?

Well, the first thing to do is recognize that the money you put into mitigation is not going to be available for adaptation. When I say, ``adaptation,'' I mean protecting people from the kinds of events we are now seeing occur in southern California. We absolutely have to do this. Wishing this away or blaming it on climate change and shrugging ones' shoulders that this isn't happening will not work.

California is raising literally billions, billions, of dollars through clean fuel standards, cap-and-trade devices, and other things, but they are not investing it in protecting their people. They are not. I would hope that those who are watching Congressman LaMalfa and me today would reach out to their Congress folks and say we want you to do something. We want you to not just come in and help repair and clean up, which we will do, but, also, we want you to try to stop the damage that is being done to our forests. We actually want you to do something.

There will be an opportunity, I think perhaps as early as next week, to vote on Bruce Westerman's Fix Our Forests Act. It would go a long way to making our forests look like this. Why wouldn't we be doing this? What is happening now is certain folks are filing lawsuits to stop us from going into the woods and cleaning them up so that they are not destroyed by wildfire. We can do the same thing in places like southern California by working on water delivery systems and by working on storing more water and having better abilities to put out fires once they start.

Even though this was a, I hope, rare event with these cataclysmically driven winds, this will happen again. This happened in Oregon over and over, it has happened in northern California over and over, and it is time for us to do something about it.

The people who are listening today can do something about it. They can get on the phone and call. They can call their Congressman or - woman and say that we need your help.

I thank Congressman LaMalfa again for taking the time today to bring this issue to the attention of the American people. I think it is incumbent upon the American people to step up, call their Congressman and let's do something about it.

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