Does California Put Plants Over People?

City Journal posts:

Governor Newsom has dismissed the lawsuits against the state as “opportunistic” and insisted that “the state didn’t start this fire.” The federal indictment supports his contention that a 29-year-old arsonist lit the match. But the evidence put forward by the victims’ lawsuit suggests that state environmental policies helped ensure that a small, containable brush fire would smolder for nearly a week, unmonitored and unextinguished, until it exploded into calamity.

Twelve people are dead. Nearly 7,000 homes and businesses are gone. And a question at the heart of this disaster—whether California’s environmental priorities have made its citizens less safe—is one that state leaders have yet to confront.