Originally published at: How the Rapid Spread of Misinformation Pushed Oregon Lawmakers to Kill the State’s Wildfire Risk Map - TPM – Talking Points Memo
This story first appeared at ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. This is how misinformation gets accepted as fact. A year after Oregon endures its most destructive fire season on record in 2020, state lawmakers order a map estimating the wildfire risk…
How the Rapid Spread of Misinformation Pushed Oregon Lawmakers to Kill the State’s Wildfire Risk Map
1 Like
American voters have been lied to and lulled to sleep by the fossil fuels industry and real estate developers, via their friends at right-wing media. So much of American family wealth is in their property, so now cannot face the truth of the climate catastrophe that is upon us. This is a systemic failure with no happy outcome, until people force the oligarchs to stop polluting the atmosphere at scale.
4 Likes
Rightists continue to baffle me; they’re just fine with power tripping homeowners’ associations telling people what color paint they can have. Vote with your feet. Vote with your dollars.
But when the government does it? Aw, Hell, No.
5 Likes
Property owners rank fourth, behind Christians, Americans and Taxpayers, in the least impressive categories of exalted ones who think their opinions should count double. “Because it diminishes my property value,” is as nebulous and vacuous a justification as any, for all sorts of nonsense.
Sellers want the combustibility of their tinderbox minimized and buyers are equally deserving to know this accurate information. Political scientists need a better theory of who the Chosen Ones are.
3 Likes
Reminder to all that Oregon guaranteed its populace that no new black people would be allowed into the state after declaring statehood.
One of the hearts of our racist nation is anywhere in Oregon east of the 5. I know. I worked in those areas.
1 Like
A reminder that if you don’t give people a villain, they will invent one. That is where Oregon failed here - not properly stating who was to blame for these property owners losing their insurance or being unable to sell.
3 Likes
The mere fact that thousands of people soak up this shit and believe it to be gospel is staggering. I know there are a lot of ignorant folks in the wide world, but just, wow. Do they really think State Farm was influenced by a government map? Isn’t it highly probable (and possible) that they have their own investigators who noted the huge amounts of property destroyed by wildfires? The mind boggles.
4 Likes
You mean a company whose entire business model is “analyzing and managing risk” might have their own people and technology to do so?
Shocking!
4 Likes
The amount of misinformation related to wildfires is staggering. It’s the natural disater that has captured the most attention in the last decade, and this makes it ripe for right wing conspiracies. Jewish space lasers, weather manipulation, left wing anti rutral plots, are all fair game. Interestingly, California adopted MUCH more aggressive (and lilely more accurate) hazard maps (risk and hazard are different) and there was relatively little pushback, even in the crazy corners of the state.
1 Like
Not to be simplistic, but just make the defensibility standards apply statewide.
These complainers will also be the 1st ones expecting the State and the other people of the state to help them rebuild after they ignored common sense measures and were probably underinsured.