Fire wisdom

Now that the California fires are contained, it's time to ask why such big fires happen. Mexico, just to the south, hotter and drier than Southern California, doesn't suffer such big fires because they conduct controlled burns. In Australia, controlled burns are an acknowledged part of living on that dry continent - the Aborigines have been doing it for tens of thousands of years! Native peoples of the Americas did, too. How could we have lost this knowledge?

My old friend Watsuji Tetsuro (left) might have had something to say about this. His somewhat polemical essay on the American national character (written during WW2) sees our nation as one premised on the denial of climatic constraints. Climate is something to be overcome rather than accepted - let alone celebrated. We feel it's only a matter of time before technologies (like heating, air conditioning and artificial light) make every corner of the land indistinguishably habitable (easier to believe in the "paradise" of SoCal!).