It all seems as if it’s almost timed to coincide with the return of Donald Trump’s return to power. The failure of progressive leadership has been exposed in a way that it has never been before as disastrous wildfires wipe out entire neighborhoods in deep-blue Los Angeles, a result not only of natural forces like unusually high winds and dry conditions but by the epic breakdown of any real leadership in the Golden State and the misplaced priorities of elected officials like LA Mayor Karen Bass and camera-addicted Gov. Gavin Newsom.

We have covered the seemingly endless perversions of what passes as official management in this one-party state, but it just keeps getting worse. For every fiasco we report, another one quickly comes in. While Newsom and his ilk scold us endlessly for our gas-powered cars, the wildfires—that could have arguably been prevented by competent stewardship of our forests—have now caused far more damage than one million of my Ford Explorers could possibly ever do.

And now that clean, green technology he so touts is coming back to haunt him—there’s a huge fire Thursday night at a lithium battery plant in northern Monterey County. What’s a little lithium smoke in the air in the name of progress, right?

Highway 1 is closed and evacuations were ordered in Moss Landing and the Elkhorn Slough area after a major fire erupted Thursday afternoon at a battery storage plant in Moss Landing in northern Monterey County.

The fire, which was raging out of control Thursday night, sending up huge flames and clouds of hazardous black smoke, was reported around 3 p.m. at the plant, located on Highway 1, Monterey County spokesman Nicholas Pasculli said.

Evacuations of about 1,500 people were ordered for areas of Moss Landing south of Elkhorn Slough, north of Molera Road and Monterey Dunes Way, and west of Castroville Boulevard and Elkhorn Road to the ocean, he said.

🔥 😱 🔥 BIG NEWS: Massive fire at the world’s largest lithium battery storage facility in the WORLD, of course in @GavinNewsom run California!

In addition to making it impossible to use solar power during evening periods, it’s releasing VERY toxic heavy metal smoke.

UGH! https://t.co/RONkpVEXTj

— Houman David Hemmati, MD, PhD (@houmanhemmati) January 17, 2025

Don’t worry, though; it’s all in the name of leadership. “California leads the nation in environmental stewardship,” Newsom recently proclaimed as he announced an executive order aimed at streamlining regulatory requirements to start rebuilding in the ravaged Pacific Palisades. To me, “environmental stewardship” does not include massive conflagrations that send so much smoke into the atmosphere that they can be seen from space, nor toxic battery fires that emit toxic chemicals into our collective atmosphere.

Nothing to see here, folks:

The plant is located on the site of a now-shuttered 1950s-era PG&E Moss Landing natural gas plant visible for its huge smokestacks near Moss Landing Harbor. The first phase was completed in 2020, and it was expanded to 750 megawatts in 2023. Vistra sells the electricity stored there to PG&E, which also owns another battery storage plant on the north side of the site that has hundreds of Tesla battery packs. That facility did not appear to be burning by 8 p.m.

The facility has been the site of other fires before.

1/3 of Gavin Newsom’s green energy storage milestone is currently sending gigantic plumes of poisonous lithium into the atmosphere. pic.twitter.com/fxBe8dLpSj

— Kevin Dalton (@TheKevinDalton) January 17, 2025

I am not opposed to progress and technology, and perhaps one day soon we will find a clean, safe energy solution (such as nuclear energy, which my colleague Ward Clark argues vociferously for), but in the meantime, the Joe Biden-Gavin Newsom et al. efforts to shove not-ready-for-prime time “solutions” down our throats before they're ready has proven far more disastrous than the effects of SUVs or gas stoves or our water heaters.

At this point, it's hard not to argue that the cure is far worse than the "disease" they claim is climate change. Meanwhile, if they truly believe that global warming is the cause of these fiery disasters—why weren't they better prepared for them? Burning questions that need answers.

Gavin Newsom’s (political) world has gone up in smoke this week, and this latest toxic fire just ruins him even more.

It’s time for a different way.