: washingtontimes – excerpt
CLOVIS, Calif. — Here in the town dubbed the “gateway to the Sierras,” the haze from the Ferguson Fire is fading as Yosemite National Park prepares to reopen, but the debate over how to stop wildfires from razing the state again next year continues to smolder.
California’s catastrophic wildfire season has illuminated the yearslong stalemate between those who want to cut back the overgrown, beetle-infested national forests and environmentalists who have axed efforts to fell more trees, blaming the destructive fires on climate change… (more)
This article illustrates the urgency of preventing wildfires and illustrates the importance of moving past party politics to reach rational solutions by exposing the irrational conversations that keep us from moving forward. When will Washington and Sacramento learn to drop the empty rhetoric and the blame game and fix the problems? Climate change and the lumber industry are not the problem. The problem is to protect the forest. What do firefighters do when the fires are raging? The cut the trees in their path. Why not “trim” the trees before the fires start?
Always looking to the future and emerging technologies may not be the best approach. Historical knowledge is sometimes the answer.
