Getting it to burn, by not letting it burn — why the United States never gets anything meaningful done

04 August 2021

Indicative?

Political pressure from California has 'persuaded' the US Forest Service to reverse its comparatively recent 'let it burn' forest fire policy.

As background, some while ago, the Forest Service wised up to its previously erroneous ecological thinking. And the agency began letting wildfires clear out American forests' rapidly building overgrowth of trees, brush and dead wood.

Native Americans had (after all) intentionally burned wildlands, so as to keep the land productive and its fires mildly controllable.

But, alas, the onset of Incipient Wisdom in the United States always retreats in the face of resistance:

Hit with bipartisan criticism about a “wait and see” approach to fighting wildfires in California, the new chief of the USDA Forest Service is directing his agency to become more aggressive about suppressing new fires.

Ironically, the Forest Service for years was so aggressive about extinguishing new wildfires that it was criticized for not letting some fires burn naturally as a means of removing flammable vegetation from the forests. In recent years, the agency has taken a more measured approach, saying it would let some fires burn if they didn’t threaten people, buildings or important infrastructure.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, who toured the Tamarack burn zone last week with Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak, complained to President Joe Biden about the Forest Service’s handling of the fire.

“We need your help to change the culture in terms of the suppression strategies in this climate literally and figuratively to be more aggressive on these federal fires,” Newsom told Biden.

Timothy Ingalsbee, a retired firefighter, said the Forest Service is making a mistake by going back to its old policy.

“We’re stuck on this treadmill of mismanagement,” said Ingalsbee, a former Forest Service employee who runs an Oregon group called Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology.

This most recent fire-management about-face . . .

. . . is representative of why the United States never-ever gets anything societally beneficial accomplished.

Self-entitled political people and corporations always get in the way.

The real problem (underlying California's difficulty) is, of course, ignored

California appears to pretty much let people (who are outside crowded cities) build wherever they want. No matter the environmental fire and flooding recklessness of their decisions.

Take, for example, building houses in fire-prone chaparral on hillsides — and then whining about the inevitable conflagrations that erupt.

This figurative chest-beating (and rending of charred garments) is usually followed by another display of sadness, when predictable winter rains wash away whatever the warm season's flames left behind.

As a Rocky Mountain-sourced person, accustomed to looking for ways to reduce fire and flood risk, I have trouble comprehending California's visible levels of risk-ignoring.

If, for instance, you wander around the Northern California region where I live currently (on military-associated assignment) — I notice flammable vegetation literally inches and centimeters away from equally flame-inviting walls and roofs. All over the place.

Not to mention (way too frequently) close-by, towering, sap-filled evergreens. Those trees just waiting to explosively celebrate the Fourth of July, all year round, via a stray ember's ignition potential.

Californians literally do not seem to notice these too-amorous arrangements of tinder and fuel. Neither, evidently, do California's too plentiful supply of ridiculous-issue regulators.

And so, the Golden State's unhappy barbecue is regularly lighted.

Of course, we are consistently told that this is all the US Forest Service's fault. Not to mention the Bureau of Land Management.

The bad situation, into which people placed their houses and belongings — as well as the climate warning signs that they apparently did not bother to adjust to — are (the Governor tells us) the Feds' and global warming's fault.

The moral? — Indulging self-entitled, self-destructive silliness is the American way

Firefighters all over the American west regularly put their well-being(s) on the line. So as to lap up the stupidities that many of the rest of us booby-trap the environment for them to face.

Metaphorically, verbal diarrhea and inaction mindlessly drool themselves downhill. The bottom usually pays. Those are never the 'authorities' who created and fueled the problem in the first place.

Oligarchically controlled pseudo-democracy has its pitfalls.

PeteFree.com

Getting it to burn, by not letting it burn — why the United States never gets anything meaningful done