It is easy to despair about how and why politicians and activists have, in recent years, created catastrophic fires from Hawaii to Greece, the so-called “homelessness” problem, and the Censorship Industrial Complex. Climate-obsessed officials and activists focused the attention and resources of electrical utilities, Public Utility Commissions, and state legislatures on building new solar and wind projects, not fire prevention. Progressive government officials and activists demanded that people suffering from untreated mental illness and addiction be allowed to sleep, use drugs, and defecate in parks and on sidewalks, even when a shelter bed is available to them. And elites convinced themselves and others that Trump Republicans, Covid skeptics, critics of transgenderism, and many others, posed a direct threat to life and a clear and present threat to democracy and needed to be secretly censored online.

At the same time, over the last several months, elected leaders and corporate executives have been forced to change their tune and even their policies on homelessness, fires, and censorship. Not only have both Governor Gavin Newsom and Mayor London Breed finally come out and said they support shutting down the open drug scenes euphemistically referred to as “homeless encampments,” the Department of Justice is taking action to shut down New York’s government-run drug use site. Elected officials and journalists from Hawaii to California to Greece have acknowledged that societies can prevent catastrophic fires and are not doomed to them because of climate change. And, earlier this week, Facebook fired a highly partisan fact checker in Australia, which Sky News had exposed and I had amplified on X (formerly Twitter).