Niall Ferguson, Columnist

California Burnin’ — a Warning Against One-Party Rule

Fires, blackouts, high taxes, poverty, scarce housing, urban squalor, lousy schools — it’s a wonder anybody stays.

September 20, 2020 at 12:00 PM UTC

Niall Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the author, most recently, of “Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe.” He is a columnist for The Free Press.

It’s too big for one man.
Photographer: Nic Coury/Bloomberg

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“California, folks, is America fast forward.” Thus said Governor Gavin Newsom, hoarsely, amid brown smoke at the North Complex Fire on Sept. 11. “What we’re experiencing right here is coming to a community all across the United States of America … unless we get our act together on climate change.”

I was with him all the way until he said the words “on climate change.”