George Rebane
Over 40 dead and counting, plus thousands of buildings and homes burned, plus hundreds of thousands of acres of trees and wild critters of all kinds killed, plus untold amounts of public monies pissed away that could have been used for many better things for the common good. And all of this as the result of an annually recurring insanity put in place by well-meaning econuts through programs that started long ago with Smokey the Bear. Today the epidemic of this seeming ignorance has become endemic.
Once upon a time the U.S. Forest Service’s mission was to actively manage the federal government’s resources. Yet numerous laws over the last 50 years, including the Endangered Species Act and National Environmental Policy Act, have hampered tree-clearing, controlled burns and timber sales on federal land. (13nov18 WSJ)
Today the Agenda21 driven political divide has been augmented by the use of ‘climate change’ to double down on dumb forest management policies. Moonbeam Brown has led a chorus of progressive pundits and their legions of true believers, claiming that preventable man-made global warming is the cause of all the recent catastrophic conflagrations (more here). Again, the data does not support such emotionally charged political arguments; there is no scientific basis for a causal link, only a political one. (more here, H/T to reader)
President Trump’s message about governments mismanaging our forests is spot on, no matter how crudely it might have been delivered. We have to reduce the tremendous fuel loads in our forests through active programs of undergrowth clearance, harvesting timber, and prescribed burns. One only need to look at the circa 1850 photos of California forests to understand what humans have done over the last 150+ years. Back then trees in the mountainous west grew in copses separated by open spaces – lightning started forest fires burned only a few copses that had grown too close together, but that was it, the fire didn’t spread and go on burning miles of trees. It took human foolishness to encourage cheek-by-jowl growth through aggressive firefighting. Forest thinning wildfires were outlawed, but never stopped.
Now our ecological betters, using the government gun, have created critically flammable environments wherever they could identify an endangered critter or flower or fungus or … . Put that together with population growth that has built homes and towns in the former wildlands, and anyone with an ounce of critical thought knows that the annual chance of disastrous wildfires quickly approaches certainty. The reality is that the forests and chaparral will burn, no matter what. The only choice we have is whether it will burn economically when and where we want it to burn, or whether it will burn when and where we can least afford to have it burn and at enormous cost.
The right choice should be an easy one. So why hasn’t it been made? There may be several reasons, but one of the most plausible explanations for our decades-long insanity in choosing badly is that such wildfires also serve a greater political purpose to aid the ongoing fundamental transformation of America. If we consider public policies encouraging such annual holocausts in that light, then one can make the plausible case that our devastating wildfires are really the result of totally rational decisions toward an end which eventually will serve a greater common good – these wildfires are just another form of the eggs which must be cracked before our central planners can deliver their promised omelet. It's worth a discussion.
[16nov18 update] An environmentalists’ epiphany???
After decades of butting heads, some environmentalists and logging supporters have largely come to agreement that forests need to be logged to be saved. … Another dangerous factor, land-management experts say, is that forests have become overgrown with trees and underbrush due to a mix of human influences, including a past federal policy of putting out fires, rather than letting them burn. Washington has also sharply reduced logging under pressure from environmentalists. (more here)
Is liberalism really anything different from mental illness? Why did it take decades for these people to recognize a solution known to the rest of us for over a century? How many other such practical approaches to commerce, land use, and recreation do these people continue to deny America? Does this epiphany represent some light at the end of this insane tunnel?
rebanesruminations.com 
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