10 weeks and counting
Danbob
from our local forest fires. Our local grape growers have asked for
disaster aid because the smoke has been so dense that the grapes
weren't able to complete photosynthesis. My poor garden has row upon
row of tomato plants that should have been ripe by July and are still
covered with tiny shriveled green pellets. Imagine that: the U.S.
Forest Service has created it's own little ecological disaster. They
must be really proud of themselves.
Been doing a lot of research on their new, "let-it-burn," policy. (If
I'm getting screwed I just like to know who's doing it and why.) It
turns out that the leading proponent of let it burn has been a group
called The Wilderness Society. Their goal has been to turn as much
land as possible into designated wilderness areas and they've spent
about 2 and 1/2 million dollars over the last few years lobbying for
that.
The fly in their soup is that the Forest Service doesn't even have
enough money to maintain what's already been designated as
wilderness. So, they've been aggressively pushing let it burn as a
solution to that. If we just let our forest fires burn we, (a) save a
lot of money on fire suppression and (b) save a lot of money on
reducing hazardous fuels in the forest, is the way their thinking
goes.
To that end, they're proposing that fire control officers get
financial incentives for letting it burn. In other words, if you're a
fire fighter, you get more money for not fighting the fire than you'd
get if you fought it. And they're saying that the forest service
should be able to count the number of acres they've burned up as a
credit toward the fuel reduction part of their budget. In other
words, they don't have to actually go out and clear that pesky brush
anymore, they can just burn it up and say they've fulfilled their
budgetary obligations.
It's just amazing. You know, the forest service was originally placed
under the agriculture department because trees were considered crops.
And the forest service was supposed to protect and encourage that
crop. So now they're out burning down the crop because they wouldn't
let the loggers harvest the crop and the crop got overgrown and . . .
how did we get to be this insane?
Gene
Walt Kelly died.
Ten weeks - that is really bad. We haven't been bothered by the Great
Dismal Swamp Fire in a month - and I think it's still doing something
- peat is hard to put out.
Gene
Danbob
>
>
> how did we get to be this insane?
>
> Walt Kelly died.
> Ten weeks - that is really bad. We haven't been bothered by the Great
> Dismal Swamp Fire in a month - and I think it's still doing something
> - peat is hard to put out.
> Gene
Oh, my, Gene - I see from the news coverage that you have a crack
federal fire fighting team in charge of the swamp fire. That explains
why the peat is so hard to put out. They literally have a policy of
burning down as much wild lands as they can and we get to breathe the
crap their burns put out.
So I'm guessing they probably built their containment lines miles away
from the actual fire and burnt inward. Probably announced that they
had it contained and - whoops - it jumped it's lines and burned a
bunch more. And you've probably been getting a bunch of press
releases about how there's, "a very heavy fuel load," and how,
"conditions make fighting this fire very difficult."
They're doing it all over the country. I didn't realize they were
doing it near you, though.