Leftist Arsonists Are Responsible for More Wildfires than Climate Change

A leftist university professor who made media headlines a year ago for claiming former president Donald Trump is a potentially homicidal narcissist has been indicted for deliberately starting a string of wildfires in California. According to police reports, Gary Stepehen Maynard started some of the fires in a manner designed to trap and kill firefighters in the field.

Maynard’s indictment necessitates an examination of why is it that leftist agitators are often the arsonists who start wildfires. And why does the media let leftist politicians get away with blaming global warming for wildfires – including the very wildfires that provably were started by leftist agitators?

Maynard gained attention in the media last year by comparing Trump to homicidal leftist cult leader Jim Jones. Maynard asserted Trump might exhibit violent and murderous tendencies as a means of capturing attention. Soon thereafter, police noticed that “”Where Maynard went, fires started. Not just once, but over and over again.”

Maynard appeared to intend his fires as instruments of murder as well as wildlife destruction. As reported by NPR: “‘He entered the evacuation zone and began setting fires behind the first responders fighting the Dixie fire,’ the U.S. attorney’s office in Sacramento said in court papers. It added, ‘Maynard’s fires were placed in the perfect position to increase the risk of firefighters being trapped between fires.’”

The Maynard indictment followed the arrest of environmental engineering student Alexandra Souverneva under suspicion of starting other California wildfires.

Back in 2013, radical climate activist Rebecca Jeanette Rubin pled guilty to deliberately setting wildfires across western Canada.

In a story that is not aging well for the New York Times, the Times claimed in an September 2020 article, “Fringe right-wing websites, like The Gateway Pundit, have blamed left-wing arsonists, fueling false rumors that authorities say are impeding rescue efforts.”

While the New York Times and its climate-activist allies attempt to blame global warming whenever there is a wildfire, NASA satellite data show that the amount of global lands burned by wildfires each year has declined 24 percent since 1998 – despite widespread wildfire arson in America, Canada, and Australia.

Assuming that we must view all extreme weather events through the lens of climate change, as climate activists assert, then global warming is causing a 24 percent decline in wildfires. At the same time, leftist arsonists and climate activists are causing more wildfires than climate change.

James Taylor
James Taylor
James Taylor is the President of the Heartland Institute. Taylor is also director of Heartland's Arthur B. Robinson Center for Climate and Environmental Policy. Taylor is the former managing editor (2001-2014) of Environment & Climate News, a national monthly publication devoted to sound science and free-market environmentalism.

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1 COMMENT

  1. For about ten years I have believed many of CA fires are set by traffickers to distract from their routes, cartels growing MJ, immigrant squatters stealing electricity from the lines and arsonists. No real investigation of politically unpopular causes while animals burn alive.

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