Now that the smoke has cleared from last fall's Southern California firestorms, one might assume that fire protection experts and elected leaders are busy working on methods to ensure that developments in fire hazard areas are better protected. That assumption, however, is only partly true.

Developers are building residences in California at the fastest pace in years. From recent economic reports suggesting a slowing economy, the construction might appear to be risky. But builders are banking on two irrefutable facts: There is no end in sight to the state's population growth, and all of those people need a place to live.

This summer, another huge ice shelf broke off the north polar ice cap and began drifting out to sea. The event made world news because it added to the mounting, tangible evidence of a phenomenon that the Bush administration ignores but that California's government cannot afford to dismiss: Climate change.

The time has come to call rail transit a planner's pipe dream. Californians have poured tax money into rail for more than a decade, apparently on a well-intentioned aspiration that if we build tracks, we will ride the train. But according to a U.S. Census report on trip-to-work travel, Californians have not found the train station.

It was cool and foggy along the Santa Barbara Channel coast in early June. So the delicate layer of ash coating everything outside and the faint smell of burnt sage seemed a bit incongruous.