DL Open Thread: Friday, January 10, 2025

Rep. McBride Introduces First Bill.  It’s a good one:

Today, Congresswoman Sarah McBride (DE-AL) and Congresswoman Young Kim (CA-40) introduced the Ending Scam Credit Repair Act (ESCRA) to crack down on fraudulent practices in the credit repair industry. The bipartisan bill targets credit repair organizations (CROs) that deceive consumers with high fees and empty promises to improve credit scores. The bill will ensure transparency and accountability for consumers.

“These CROs exploit legal loopholes to target cash-strapped Delawareans by charging large upfront fees based on false hopes of debt reduction. Our bipartisan bill eliminates those loopholes that have allowed predatory practices to flourish by banning upfront fees, improving transparency, and enhancing consumer protections. Delawareans deserve real results, not empty and costly promises. I am grateful to Congresswoman Kim for working across the aisle with me on common sense solutions to deliver for our constituents.”

10,000 Structures Destroyed:

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The two biggest wildfires ravaging the Los Angeles area have killed at least 10 people and burned more than 10,000 homes and other structures, officials said as they urged more people to heed evacuation orders after a new blaze ignited and quickly grew.

Several weather monitoring agencies announced Friday that Earth recorded its hottest year ever in 2024. “Hurricane Helene, floods in Spain and the weather whiplash fueling wildfires in California are symptoms of this unfortunate climate gear shift,” University of Georgia meteorology professor Marshall Shepherd said.

AccuWeather, a private company that provides data on weather and its impact, on Thursday increased its estimate of the damage and economic loss to $135-$150 billion.

A Scientist’s Perspective.  I learned something from this article. You might as well:

It’s important to recognize where the fire started. The Eaton Fire started right in the middle of a developed area. It’s not one of these fires that started off in the mountains east of LA and then burned down into LA so that people had a chance to plan. This started right within the urban environment. That’s the primary reason why it was so destructive.

We don’t know what the [direct] causes are, but there’s reason to believe they may have been driven by power line failures. In the last 20 years, we’ve had five times more area burn due to power line failure–ignited fires than in the previous 20 years.

So the big message is, climate change may be exacerbating all this, but population growth is another factor that we have to keep in mind. In the last 20 years, we’ve added something like 6 million people to California. You add that many people, and they end up having to live further and further out from the urban environment—and oftentimes, in areas of extreme risk.

Rethinking Delaware Land Use.  Thirty years too late, but nevertheless welcome:

With Delaware rapidly developing, residents growing increasingly concerned about the change and new leadership taking over virtually every branch of government in the state, a group of former state Cabinet secretaries, community advocates and county leadership is making a push to change land use policy across the First State.

The group, who have named themselves Rethinking Delaware, wants to see a paradigm shift in how people think about land use policy, and for them to see those decisions don’t exist in silos.

Mark Nardone, the director of the Delaware Nature Society and Rethinking Delaware member, said he has conversations with people about these issues “every day.”

He said the costs of reshaping land use practice in Delaware will save the state in the long run, as opposed to waiting and trying to adjust later.

Nardone argues nobody in the group is anti-development, but wants to see the state look at land use in a holistic manner.

“We’ve kind of just watched the bad decisions pile on to each other, and here we are at this cumulative point,” Nardone said. “We’ve reached a point where something should have been done 30 years ago, when the development really started taking off.”

What do you want to talk about?