What Caused the CA Wildfires--Climate Change or DEI?

A pretty standard view in philosophy (and in this case, philosophy seems pretty sane to me) is that a given effect is usually brought about by a complex of causal factors. Why did the tree fall? Well, the strong wind last night blew it down. But also: it was overgrown on one side, its roots were shallow, the ground was wet from frequent rain... It's sometimes said that the cause of any given effect is the total state of the universe prior to that effect's occurrence...but, well, things do get a bit wacky at that point. And we certainly should not go there outside the seminar room. That's woo-woo philosophy shit.

   Normally, when we ask about the cause of e, we are asking for the most salient causal factor.

   Salience, of course, can be a complicated and unclear thing.

   Anyhoo...

   Something sparked the fire. We don't know what. Fireworks. An arsonist. A downed power line. A lightning strike. That's what we'd normally count as the (or "the"?) cause of the fires. But what caused them to spread out of control? Well, there's the background condition of a semi-arid environment. We can count that as a cause, but sometimes don't. There's the Santa Annas, needless to say. And apparently inordinately strong ones. Why couldn't the fires be stopped? A slightly different question... Low water supplies, it seems? What caused that? Sometimes we can find bad decisions by administrators--or general incompetence. DEI does promote incompetence...and an emphasis on DEI (rather than the relevant task at hand) generally decreases institutional effectiveness.

   Higher temperatures can also count as a causal factor--though usually not the most salient one. Some kind of spark started the thing--but high temperatures make it easier to spread because it's easier to hit the combustion point.

   Anyway, both DEI and climate change may play some role in the fires spreading. We can find out about the former by examining the priorities and decisions of the relevant officials. But unless we find something like a memo saying Damn the reservoir levels, spend that money on drag queen story hour, I kinda doubt that DEI was one of the really crucial causal factors. Despite my loathing of DEI.

   As for climate change: the IPCC itself says that we can't attribute any adverse weather events to it except, maybe, heat waves. So that's largely out. (The IPCC says a lot of things. But Roger Pielke jr. shows that this is their most considered position on the matter.)

   What's going on here is common. Something bad happens and all parties jump to blame it on their villain of choice. (Which, of course, doesn't mean they're wrong...)

   My $0.02, FWIW.