Uncategorized
Deadly fire levelled a California town in less than a day
PARADISE, Calif. — Not a single resident of Paradise can be seen anywhere in town after most of them fled the burning Northern California community that may be lost forever. Abandoned, charred vehicles cluttered the main thoroughfare, evidence of the panicked evacuation a day earlier.
Most of its buildings are in ruin. Entire
Only a day after it began, the blaze that started outside the hilly town of Paradise had grown on Friday to nearly 140 square miles (360 square
Nine people have been found dead, some inside their cars and others outside vehicles or homes after a desperate evacuation that Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea called “the worst-case scenario.” Their identities were not yet known.
“It is what we feared for a long time,” Honea said, noting there was no time to knock on residents’ doors one-by-one.
With fires also burning in Southern California , state officials put the total number of people forced from their homes at more than 200,000. Evacuation orders included the entire city of Malibu, which is home to 13,000, among them some of Hollywood’s biggest stars.
President Donald Trump issued an emergency declaration providing federal funds for Butte, Ventura and Los Angeles counties.
The fire in Paradise, about 180 miles (290
A thick, yellow haze hung in the air, giving the appearance of twilight in the middle of the day. Some of the “majestic oaks” the town boasts of on its
Thursday morning’s evacuation order set off a desperate exodus in which many frantic motorists got stuck in gridlocked traffic. Many abandoned their vehicles to flee on foot as the flames bore down on all sides.
“The fire was so close I could feel it in my car through rolled up windows,” said Rita Miller, who fled Paradise with her disabled mother.
The town, situated on a ridge between two valleys, was a popular retirement community, raising concerns of elderly and immobile residents who have been reported missing.
On the outskirts of town, Patrick Knuthson, a fourth-generation resident, said only two of the 22 homes that once stood on his street are still there — his and a
“The fire burned from one house, to the next house, to the next house until they were pretty much all gone,” Knuthson said. He worked side-by-side with
“I lost my home in 2008, and it’s something you can’t really describe until you go through it,” said Knuthson, who battled flames eight feet or taller as strong winds whipped hot embers around him. He worked so long in the flames and smoke that he needed to use oxygen Thursday night at his home, but he refused to leave.
On Friday, Knuthson was covered from head to toe in black soot. His tiny town will never be the same, he said. The bucolic country landscape dotted with bay and oak trees will take years to recover.
In the town’s central shopping area, there was little left but rubble.
St. Nicolas Church still stands, a rare exception. The nearby New Life church is gone. An unblemished Burger King sign rises above a pile of charred rubble. The metal patio tables are the only recognizable things under Mama Celeste’s pizzeria sign. Only blackened debris remains behind the Happy Garden Chinese Restaurant sign touting its sushi. Seven burned out Mercedes chassis are all that’s left of Ernst Mercedes Specialist lot.
City Hall survived. But the Moose Lodge and Chamber of Commerce buildings didn’t.
The town’s 100-bed hospital is still standing, but two of its smaller buildings, including an outpatient clinic, are flattened. The Adventist Feather River Hospital evacuated its 60 patients in a frantic rush when the evacuation order came Thursday morning. Some were forced back by clogged roads, but all of them eventually made it out, some in dramatic fashion.
On the outskirts of Paradise, Krystin Harvey lost her mobile home. She described a town rich with historical charm, until a day ago.
“It was an old country town. It had the old buildings lined up along the walkway,” she said. “Almost all businesses were locally owned and included an assortment of antique shops, thrift stores, small restaurants, two bars and lots of churches.”
Harvey wondered if the town’s traditions would survive. The town was famous for the discovery of a 54-pound gold nugget in the 1800s, which eventually prompted a festival known as Gold Nugget Days. The highlight of the festival is a parade that features a Gold Nugget Queen.
“My daughter’s going out for the gold nugget queen this year,” said Harvey, then she paused. “Well, it’s been going for 100 years, but we don’t know — there’s no town now.”
People in Paradise, like so many in California, have become accustomed to wildfires, and many said they were well prepared. They kept their gutters clean, some kept pumps in their swimming pools and had fire hoses. But the ferocity and speed of this blaze overwhelmed those preparations.
Drought, warmer weather attributed to climate change and home construction deeper into forests have led to more destructive wildfire seasons that have been starting earlier and lasting longer.
Just 100 miles north of Paradise, the sixth most destructive wildfire in California history hit in July and August and was also one of the earliest. Called the Carr Fire, near Redding, it killed eight people, burned about 1,100 homes and consumed 358 square miles (927 square
Paradise town Councilmember Melissa Schuster lost her 16-acre Chapelle de L’Artiste retreat, a posh property with a chapel, pond and pool. But Friday she was clinging to two furry glimmers of hope: Shyann and Twinkle Star Heart.
“Our llamas,” she said. “Somehow they made it through.”
Schuster said they stopped trying to hook up a trailer for the animals and fled their home and property with just their three cats on Thursday when the day turned pitch black as fire roared in.
“It’s Paradise,” she said. “It’s always been Paradise, and we will bring it back.”
___
Associated Press writers Don Thompson in Chico and Jocelyn Gecker, Janie Har, Martha Mendoza, Daisy Nguyen, Olga R. Rodriguez and Sudhin Thanawala in San Francisco contributed to this report.
Paul Elias And Gillian Flaccus, The Associated Press
Uncategorized
What is ‘productivity’ and how can we improve it
From the Fraser Institute
Earlier this year, a senior Bank of Canada official caused a stir by describing Canada’s pattern of declining productivity as an “emergency,” confirming that the issue of productivity is now in the spotlight. That’s encouraging. Boosting productivity is the only way to improve living standards, particularly in the long term. Today, Canada ranks 18th globally on the most common measure of productivity, with our position dropping steadily over the last several years.
Productivity is the amount of gross domestic product (GDP) or “output” the economy produces using a given quantity and mix of “inputs.” Labour is a key input in the production process, and most discussions of productivity focus on labour productivity. Productivity can be estimated for the entire economy or for individual industries.
In 2023, labour productivity in Canada was $63.60 per hour (in 2017 dollars). Industries with above average productivity include mining, oil and gas, pipelines, utilities, most parts of manufacturing, and telecommunications. Those with comparatively low productivity levels include accommodation and food services, construction, retail trade, personal and household services, and much of the government sector. Due to the lack of market-determined prices, it’s difficult to gauge productivity in the government and non-profit sectors. Instead, analysts often estimate productivity in these parts of the economy by valuing the inputs they use, of which labour is the most important one.
Within the private sector, there’s a positive linkage between productivity and employee wages and benefits. The most productive industries (on average) pay their workers more. As noted in a February 2024 RBC Economics report, productivity growth is “essentially the only way that business profits and worker wages can sustainably rise at the same time.”
Since the early 2000s, Canada has been losing ground vis-à-vis the United States and other advanced economies on productivity. By 2022, our labour productivity stood at just 70 per cent of the U.S. benchmark. What does this mean for Canadians?
Chronically lagging productivity acts as a drag on the growth of inflation-adjusted wages and incomes. According to a recent study, after adjusting for differences in the purchasing power of a dollar of income in the two countries, GDP per person (an indicator of incomes and living standards) in Canada was only 72 per cent of the U.S. level in 2022, down from 80 per cent a decade earlier. Our performance has continued to deteriorate since 2022. Mainly because of the widening cross-border productivity gap, GDP per person in the U.S. is now $22,000 higher than in Canada.
Addressing Canada’s “productivity crisis” should be a top priority for policymakers and business leaders. While there’s no short-term fix, the following steps can help to put the country on a better productivity growth path.
- Increase business investment in productive assets and activities. Canada scores poorly compared to peer economies in investment in machinery, equipment, advanced technology products and intellectual property. We also must invest more in trade-enabling infrastructure such as ports, highways and other transportation assets that link Canada with global markets and facilitate the movement of goods and services within the country.
- Overhaul federal and provincial tax policies to strengthen incentives for capital formation, innovation, entrepreneurship and business growth.
- Streamline and reduce the cost and complexity of government regulation affecting all sectors of the economy.
- Foster greater competition in local markets and scale back government monopolies and government-sanctioned oligopolies.
- Eliminate interprovincial barriers to trade, investment and labour mobility to bolster Canada’s common market.
Uncategorized
COP29 was a waste of time
From Canadians For Affordable Energy
The twenty-ninth edition of the U.N. Climate Change Committee’s annual “Conference of the Parties,” also known as COP29, wrapped up recently, and I must say, it seemed a much gloomier affair than the previous twenty-eight. It’s hard to imagine a more downcast gathering of elitists and activists. You almost felt sorry for them.
Oh, there was all the usual nutty Net-Zero-by-2050 proposals, which would make life harder and more expensive in developed countries, and be absolutely disastrous for developing countries, if they were even partially implemented. But a lot of the roughly 65,000 attendees seemed to realize they were just spewing hot air.
Why were they so down? It couldn’t be that they were feeling guilty about their own hypocrisy, since they had flown in, many aboard private jets, to the Middle Eastern petrostate of Azerbaijan, where fossil fuels count for two-thirds of national GDP and 90% of export revenues, to lecture the world on the evils of flying in planes and prospering from the extraction of oil and natural gas. Afterall, they did the same last year in Dubai and there was no noticeable pang of guilt there.
It’s likely that Donald Trump’s recent reelection had a lot to do with it. Living as they do in a media bubble, our governing class was completely blindsided by the American people’s decision to return their 45th president to the White House. And the fact that he won the popular vote this time made it harder to deny his legitimacy. (Note that they’ve never questioned the legitimacy of Justin Trudeau, even though his party has lost the popular vote in the past two federal elections. What’s the saying about the modern Left? “If they didn’t have double standards, they’d have no standards at all.”)
Come January, Trump is committed to (once again) pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accords, to rolling back the Biden Administration’s anti-fracking and pro-EV regulations, and to giving oil companies the green light to extract as much “liquid gold” (his phrase) as possible, with an eye towards making energy more affordable for American consumers and businesses alike. The chance that they’ll be able to leech billions in taxpayer dollars from the U.S. Treasury while he’s running the show is basically zero.
But it wasn’t just the return of Trump which has gotten the climate brigade down. After a few years on top, environmentalists have been having one setback after another. Green parties saw a huge drop off in support in the E.U. parliament’s elections this past June, losing one-third of their seats in Brussels.
And wherever they’ve actually been in government, in Germany and Ireland for instance, the Greens have dragged down the popularity of the coalitions they were part of. That’s largely because their policies have been like an arrow to the heart of those nations’ economies – see the former industrial titan Germany, where major companies like Volkswagen, Siemens, and the chemical giant BASF are frantically shifting production to China and the U.S. to escape high energy costs.
But while voters around the world are kicking climate ideologues to the curb, there are still a few places where they’re managing to cling to power for dear life.
Here in Canada, for instance, Justin Trudeau and Steven Guilbeault steadfastly refuse to consider revisiting their ruinous Net Zero policies, from their ever-increasing Carbon Tax, to their huge investments in Electric Vehicles and the mandates which will force all of us to buy pricey, unreliable EVs in just over a decade, and to the emissions caps which seek to strangle the natural resource sector on which our economy depends.
Minister Guilbeault was all-in on COP29, heading the Canadian delegation, which “hosted 65 events showcasing Canada’s leadership on climate action, nature-based solutions, sustainable finance, and Canadian clean technologies—while discussing gender equality, youth perspectives, and the critical role of Indigenous knowledge and climate leadership” and stood up for Canadian values such as “2SLGBTQI+” and “gender inclusivity.” Once again, in Azerbaijan, which has been denounced for its human rights abuses.
And no word yet on the cost of all of this – for last year’s COP28 the government – or should I say the taxpayers – spent $1.4M on travel and accommodations alone for the 633 member delegation. That number, not counting the above mentioned events, are sure to be higher, as Azerbaijan is much less of a travel destination than Dubai, and so has fewer flights in and available hotel rooms.
At the same time all of this was going on, Trudeau was 12,000 kms away in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, telling an audience that carbon taxation is a “moral obligation” which is more important than the cost of living: “It’s really, really easy when you’re in a short-term survive, [to say] I gotta be able to pay the rent this month, I’ve gotta be able to buy groceries for my kids, to say, OK, let’s put climate change as a slightly lower priority.”
This is madness, and it underscores how tone-deaf the prime minister is, and also why current polling looks so good for the Conservatives that Pierre Poilievre might as well start measuring the drapes at the PMO.
He has the Trudeau Liberals’ obsessive pursuit of Net Zero policies in large part to thank for that.
The world is waking up to the true cost of the Net Zero ideology, and leaving it behind. That doesn’t mean the fight is over – the activists and their allies in government are going to squeeze as many tax dollars out of this as they possibly can. But the writing is on the wall, and their window is rapidly closing.
Dan McTeague is President of Canadians for Affordable Energy.
-
Frontier Centre for Public Policy1 day ago
Christmas: As Canadian as Hockey and Maple Syrup
-
armed forces1 day ago
Canada among NATO members that could face penalties for lack of military spending
-
National2 days ago
Conservatives say Singh won’t help topple Trudeau government until after he qualifies for pension in late February
-
Daily Caller1 day ago
LNG Farce Sums Up Four Years Of Ridiculous Biden Energy Policy
-
Daily Caller16 hours ago
Former FBI Asst Director Warns Terrorists Are ‘Well Embedded’ In US, Says Alert Should Be ‘Higher’
-
Business8 hours ago
For the record—former finance minister did not keep Canada’s ‘fiscal powder dry’
-
Daily Caller2 days ago
Shoot Down The Drones!
-
Business1 day ago
Comparing four federal finance ministers in moments of crisis