As you know, Australia is burning. The nation is being consumed by raging fires. No one seems to be able to stop them. In Sweden Greta Thunberg and her crew of high school students believe it’s all about global warming. Evidently, the complexities of the issue escape high school students.
But not Edward Ring, writing in American Greatness (via Maggie’s Farm). According to Ring and numerous others, the cause of the wildfires lies in the fact that environmentalists have prevented Australians from setting controlled fires to burn dry brush, aka, tinder.
Ring writes:
Environmental regulations are the reason for this year’s devastating wildfires in Australia. These misguided measures prevented landowners from burning off dry brush. For decades, every year during the Australian winter, across the continent, brushfires were deliberately set to safely burn the undergrowth. Even in pre-colonial times, the aborigines set brushfires to prevent tinder from accumulating.
He continues:
But [climatologist Roy] Spencer, along with everyone else paying honest attention to the disaster, blames the extreme intensity of the fires to “the increasing pressure by the public to reduce prescribed burns, clearing of dead vegetation, and cutting of fire breaks, which the public believes to have short term benefits to beauty and wildlife preservation, but results in long term consequences that are just the opposite and much worse.”
And that’s not all:
It is important to acknowledge another cause of wildfires in Australia, which is arson. As of January 7, more than 180 arsonists have been arrested since the start of the brushfire season. But arson, just like Pacific Gas and Electric’s faulty transmission lines in California, only starts the fires. It’s the buildup of tinder, thanks to misguided wildland management policies, that makes these fires so devastating.
So, there you have it. You can puff on this while you listen to climate change activists call for carbon taxes and the abolition of fossil fuels.
This is absolutely true. Any land resource management plans that prohibit culling fuel on a regular basis, be it timber or grasslands is a conflagration waiting to happen as it now is in Australia. True for the Rocky Mountain west or Appalachian east. If man does not manage it properly, nature will.
ReplyDeleteNot sure how they did it in Australia, but in the CO Front Range and Roosevelt National Forest, when the Forest Service received grant money for management (deadfall clearing, fire road maintenance, undergrowth clearing, controlled burns, etc), the local eek!oloons, supported by the national Gucci Gulch envirolawyers, would sue and demand "assessments" until the time or money, or both, ran out. Consequently, Roosevelt National Forest became a tinderbox, exacerbated by forest overcrowding and the inevitable infestations of tree-killing mountain pine beetle.
ReplyDeleteI know this because we lived in a NF inholding. Ironically, I also took several forest management classes for homeowners at the time, and we were taught - by the Forest Service - not to do the things they were doing.
Fire danger was a major motivator for our emigration. And yes, we had a wide defensive space around our home, but the last thing one wants in a wildfire is a plane dropping fire retardant on one's home, because the nightmare scenario of owning a liveable home stuck in the midst of a burned high desert forest that will take several decades to recover is terrifying. Just let it burn, collect the insurance payout, and get the hell out. My heart goes out to the Aussie homeowners.