Environmentalists believe that people cause climate change, so maybe this is just punishment (environmental justice) in their never-ending and destructive quest for sustainability.
By Katy Grimes and Megan Barth
CanadaFreePress.com
“Hotter, drier, longer forest fires we are witnessing today have nothing to do with ‘dangerous manmade climate change. They have a lot to do with idiotic forest mismanagement policies and practices.”—Paul Driessen, Senior Policy Advisor, CFACT
This past week, the New York Times reported on California’s wildfires stating that “Since 2012, according to state emergency management officials, there has not been a month without a wildfire burning—a stark contrast to previous decades, when fire officials saw the fall and winter as a time to plan and regroup,”
What’s the significance of 2012?
It is interesting that the New York Times mentioned the 2012 date, but only attributed the wildfire increases to “the recent historic drought,” and “rising temperatures,” caused by climate change. Nothing could be further from the truth.
As California burns, many Californians have been asking why the dramatic increase in wildfires in the last five years? Except for Governor Jerry Brown. Governor Brown claims that devastating fires are the “new normal.” Supporting Obama-era regulations have resulted in the new normal: an endless and devastating fire season.
Obama-Era Eco-Terrorism through Environmental Regulations
Under Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, “the Obama administration finalized a rule governing the management of 193 million acres of national forests and grasslands, establishing a new blueprint to guide everything from logging to recreation and renewable energy development,” the Washington Post reported in 2012. “The rule will serve as the guiding document for individual forest plans, which spell out exactly how these lands can be used.”
These Obama-era regulations introduced excessive layers of bureaucracy that blocked proper forest management and increased environmentalist litigation and costs—a result of far too many radical environmentalists, bureaucrats, Leftist politicians and judicial activists who would rather let forests burn, than let anyone thin out overgrown trees or let professional loggers harvest usable timber left from beetle infestation, or selectively cut timber.
In a 2016 Townhall column, Paul Driessen explains:
“Eco-purists want no cutting, no thinning—no using fire retardants in “sensitive” areas because the chemicals might get into streams that will be boiled away by conflagrations. They prevent homeowners from clearing brush around their homes, because it might provide cover or habitat for endangered species and other critters that will get incinerated or lose their forage, prey and habitats in the next blaze. They rarely alter their policies during drought years.”
“The resulting fires are not the “forest-rejuvenating” blazes of environmentalist lore. They are cauldron-hot conflagrations that exterminate wildlife habitats, roast bald eagle and spotted owl fledglings alive in their nests, boil away trout and trout streams, leave surviving animals to starve, and incinerate every living organism in already thin soils… that then get washed away during future downpours and snow melts. Areas incinerated by such fires don’t recover their arboreal biodiversity for decades.”
