But alongside the beauty of the north state were signs of the toll that ecological change is taking on the region. I teach environmental history next door in Nevada. Often when I teach about the origins, trajectory, and consequences of anthropogenic--man-made--climate change, the factors and trends seem massive, impersonal, and even abstract: industrialization, agricultural revolutions, energy transitions, ecological imperialism, the nature-culture rupture.
But the emerging effects of climate change are written across the landscape of the north state, more visible here, perhaps, because these are still the places I know best. These effects of anthropogenic climate change were visible in the dry meadows and bare peaks in Lassen, and in the charred hills to the east of the park and the scorched shores of Whiskeytown Lake west of Redding. They were visible in the too-dry, dusty logging trails through the hills, and in the dead stands of pines, made vulnerable to bark beetles by declining precipitation. They will become more visible when winters come, because the long-term trends in this part of California--as distinct from changes in weather from one year to the next--mean that winters are considerably warmer and drier, and bring far less snow, than when I was a child.
The fires that burn hotter and faster and further, over a season that now extends over half of the year, destroy landscapes essential to timber and tourism, essential in turn to the north state’s economy. They also consume forests that, if left standing and cared for, serve as carbon sinks, playing a role in mitigating some consequences of climate change. The shrinking snowpack on California’s ranges will have serious impacts on water, and the various forms of life, and economic and social potential that flow from it in the state.
The scale of these problems for California as a whole, and the north state in particular, demand leadership on a similar scale. Sadly, the north state’s political leaders have been found seriously wanting. Congressman, former state senator, and former state assemblyman Doug LaMalfa is the figure who most clearly represents the inadequacy of the north state’s representation in Sacramento and Washington. LaMalfa is known for his large stature, but when measured by the scale of his imagination, intellect, and ability to deliver for the north state, he is a pint-sized poster child for the deadbeat, dead-end politics of denial.
His campaign signs have littered the north state’s highways and byways for nearly two decades, featuring a cowboy hat and his signature “He’s one of us!” slogan. The identity of the “us” is never made quite explicit, but it’s likely a jab at the diversity and supposed decadence associated with the southern two-thirds of the state. It’s certainly not the case that most of the “us” in the north state are wealthy farmers who receive massive government subsidies while railing at forms of public expenditure that benefit the majority.
LaMalfa’s slogan is a repackaging of a dog whistle in the form of an argument about the exceptionalism of the north state, and a claim that the work that other representatives seek to undertake in Sacramento and D.C.--to address economic inequality, to combat climate change, to democratize institutions, and to ensure Americans have access to healthcare and education--has no bearing on the lives of northern Californians.
In reality, of course, rural communities in the north state are buffeted by the same ills that afflict our society at large. In the small town where I grew up, there were exceptionally strong bonds, and community pride--something that can be equally true in the urban neighborhoods of other regions. However, there was also strife within households, and between neighbors. Some of that strife was violent. Families were affected by drug abuse and addiction, job losses, poor access to healthcare, and dated physical and institutional infrastructure. Law enforcement was conspicuous primarily by its indifference. In LaMalfa’s telling, these problems are urban phenomena, with no bearing on the north state. But there is no shame in recognizing that these ills--with their wider, structural causes--affect the north state as well as other parts of the state and country, and there is no shame in demanding representatives who propose to do something about this.
For all the complaints on the political right about the supposed “political correctness” and “cancel culture” of the left, it is representatives like LaMalfa who have perfected the politics of grievance-mongering and the impotent whine. He and other north state representatives are not wrong to claim that this region of the state is frequently neglected or marginalized in the course of big conversations about the state’s future, trajectory, and needs. But their politics, and the lengthy careers they have made out of impotent whining, have done more than anything else to ensure that nothing about the north state’s relationship with California as a whole changes.
LaMalfa and his brethren--the Dahles, Jim Nielsen, and in earlier times, Wally Herger, Sam Aanestad, and Ted Gaines--make careers serving as yes-men and -women for Republican leadership in Washington and Sacramento, and No votes for anything important to California’s long-term future. They sign oaths and pledges that tie their hands when it comes to raising revenue and combating climate change, forswearing the use of their thinking skills and denying themselves the opportunity to respond to events.
And they deny the existence of anthropogenic climate change. As the Carr and Camp Fires tore across his district, LaMalfa gibbered that he “didn’t buy” human-made climate change. Over the short and long term alike, climate change will mean more of these fires that devour communities, timber resources, and tourism infrastructure. This will translate--absent intervention--into relocations, job loss, and the disintegration of whole industries. Over the long term the consequences are scarier still, and extend to transformations in temperature, rainfall, and landscapes on such a scale that the viability of whole modes of rural production will be called into question.
Rural economies dependent on resource extraction or production are particularly dependent on whatever forms of ecological equilibrium allow the maintenance of conditions essential to the continuity of those resources. In fifty years, the regions where LaMalfa grows rice might no longer be prime agricultural land. The same changes that might make his rice farms a thing of the past will affect every other industry in northern California that depends on the land. The disappearance or migration of whole ecological zones--and with them the modes of production they are capable of sustaining--should be a truly terrifying prospect. They could portend genuine economic and social upheaval of a sort people in this country have not previously been forced to consider.
But LaMalfa lashes out at his critics for peddling a "climate change agenda." What he and the deadbeats, dead-enders, and deniers miss, is that climate change is not an agenda: it is a reality. And failure to confront this reality is dangerous indeed. For all the talk among the dead-enders and deniers about scientists cooking the books in some implausibly global conspiracy, most of the climate scientists' predictions from decades past are unfolding on schedule.
LaMalfa may occasionally shake the can in D.C. for relief for fire victims. But if his politics remain the gold standard for the north state, the numbers of those victims will mount, while the threat from fires and drought will grow. You can't be a part of developing solutions to a massive, planetary problem, with particular local ramifications, if you aren't prepared to understand the causes of the problem, which in this case are forms and scales of consumption, production, and emission that are unsustainable if unreformed.
Another significant example of the dead-enders' intransigence revolves around the ongoing, and so-far futile quest to see a University of California campus situated in the north state. A UC campus is as big as it gets when it comes to public investment in a region. It brings jobs as well as visitors. It forges industry and institutional connections that stand to benefit the host region with other places and people. It cultivates and empowers local talent, and gives that talent a reason to stay. It diversifies economies that, particularly given the ecological change we face, are particularly vulnerable.
When community members revived the idea of a north state UC about five years ago, they emphasized the potential importance of degrees in life sciences, technology, and environmental studies for a campus situated in the north state. Such a proposal could see not just the creation of a region-altering campus in northern California, but one which would be well situated to ensure that its researchers and students were on the frontlines of seeking ways to combat climate change and its negative consequences, ensuring that the studies, solutions, and people involved were rooted in the north state.
However, this kind of massive and beneficial investment from the state remains unlikely when the region's representatives, whether in Sacramento or Congress, staunchly oppose the renewal of public funding for universities (funding relative to the student population has collapsed over the past decades thanks to Republican 'no' votes in Sacramento, particularly). Securing this kind of investment for the north state would require political leadership that was less interested in whining and denying, and more interested in the collective effort of governing California. Federal funding is hugely important to research on UC campuses, and it would take a better advocate than anyone who has represented the north state in many decades to unlock more of that potential.
The behavior over decades by LaMalfa and his Republican colleagues--starving California's most important public institutions that serve the children of Republican families as well as Democratic families, and benefit the whole state through the research they support--has ensured that the north state's representatives are marginal and impotent when it comes to influencing investment and development in the state and in Congress.
Republican voters in the north state may not agree with everything that the Democrats running in this election represent, but Audrey Denney (challenging LaMalfa) and Elizabeth Betancourt (challenging Meghan Dahle) would give the north state a seat at the table, and voices that take seriously the challenges the region faces. Legislative Democrats--who dominate Sacramento and are poised to exert even more power in Congress--would be more likely to heed the calls for investment if they come from legislators like Denney and Betancourt who are prepared to participate in the shared project of governance, than they currently do the dead-ender whining, hypocrisy, and denial that are the only tunes LaMalfa, Dahle, and Co seem to know.
I'm no longer a north state resident. But at some level, this region will always be home. And I hope, as I continue to return here in the years to come, that it will remain recognizable as such. But more important still are the living in and growing up in the region today. These are the people whose futures are most imperiled by ecological catastrophe, social and economic inequality, and the absence of collective investment. North state votes have excellent candidates in Denney and Betancourt, and I hope they turn the page on a dismal political chapter for the region.
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