Posted on 10/30/2003 3:29:36 AM PST by logic101.net
LIBERAL ENVRIRONMENTAL POLICIES; COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE, DANGERIOUS AND DEADLY
10/30/03
MARK A SITY
At last count there are 20 dead people, 1400 destroyed homes, over ½ million acres of destroyed wildlife habitat, and untold millions of formerly happy and health wild critters now incinerated; they had no place to run to.
Some of this destroyed habitat no doubt sheltered and fed threatened and endangered species, many of which are now crispy critters. A few of these may even be the all-important Deli Sands Flower Loving Fly. This was the fly that stopped construction of a hospital because someone thought that maybe he might have seen one a few hundred yards away from the construction site. This fly is so important that to the best of my knowledge even though no one can confirm a sighting of one in the area, the hospital project has been abandoned in mid-construction. Some of the crispy critters might even be spotted owls. Some snail darters may be downstream from the run-off and fall ill.
Hundreds of tons of pollutants have been released into the atmosphere, more than a coal-fired power plant and a SUV could hope to produce in a year. Many residents of California have been told to stay indoors unless they are being evacuated, even those without respiratory problems are warned to stay indoors; this is worse than any smog or ozone alert in history. One has to wonder about the future indirect deaths from the pollution being spewed into the atmosphere from these wildfires in CA. Some of the pollutants are very toxic, tar from shingles, insulation in burned homes, fumes from incinerated SUVs and such.
Hundreds of thousands of acres of formerly prime forest land is now charred and barren, ripe for erosion of topsoil into the rivers, streams and lakes to choke off those fragile environments.
The destruction doesn’t stop at the fire’s edge though. Those 1600+ homes need to be re-built. This means more logging in our forests. The furniture burned up in those homes needs to be replaced. This may even mean a few trees in the rain forests may need to be cut down ! More wire and nails will need to be produced; this means more strip mines for the ore.
Thousands of people are now homeless.
If a foreign power had done this destruction we would consider it an act of war. All of these disasters are things that the left continually warns the public that Republicans will do if they are left in charge of the environment. Yet all of this destruction was caused by liberal environmental policies. Please allow me to correct a line from former VP Al Gore; ‘Liberal environmental policies will kill more people, destroy more wildlife habitat and may cause extinction of some rare species.’
Some may ask how I can lay all this destruction at the feet of the liberals. I’ll be happy to answer their question. The Democrats have to keep the eco-nuts happy so that the eco-nuts deliver the votes and the contributions for each election cycle. In return the Democrats have anointed the eco-nuts as the “experts” on all environmental issues. The Democrats control most of the press, the bureaucracy, and the infrastructure. They have also had a strangle-hold on CA politics for years.
Long ago state and federal lands were leased to timber companies for logging. These contracts tended to allow “clear cutting” of large tracts of forest. Even though the timber companies, (who were interested in coming back again to re-log the areas) re-planted trees, the eco-nuts insisted that this practice caused erosion of top-soil. This erosion weakened the soil’s potential use and clogged streams. Clear cutting was banned on most government controlled land. The eco-nuts then got that ban expanded to include any sort of logging on government lands (with a few exceptions). They then prevented even the Forest Service from cutting fire-breaks which would have allowed fire crews a line to defend to keep a fire from getting out of control. Next they insisted that even dead trees not be cut down, left to fall on their own and rot (or burn). That ban was then extended to diseased trees, so these were allowed to infect other healthy trees, creating even more dry dead wood. Finally they not only banned the Forest Service from removing dried out brush from the forests, but (as Roger Hedgecock continues to point out) banned removal or use of any dead branches on the forest floor. Hence, the perfect situation for an environmental catastrophe. We had vast tracts of dry tinder, kindling and fuel, all in place to ignite the not so dry fuel of living trees.
Just like all liberal solutions, be they for poverty, homelessness, energy, pollution or a host of others, their “solution” only aggravates the problems, requiring even more liberal “solutions” to correct the problems their last solution created.
I can envision a great TV ad for Pres. Bush and his Healthy Forest Initiative. I know it won’t ever happen since Republicans don’t have the guts to take on the left; even when they know the truth they are afraid to speak it. They are always afraid they will be called “mean spirited”. They are called that anyway, but no matter, they might get called it yet another time if they speak up.
The perfect TV ad:
The picture starts with a small pretty bird happily hopping from branch to branch on a dead tree limb on a forest floor. The camera goes up and up from there to show a few acres from a chopper. A few houses can be seen on the perimeter. The fire line comes in, consumes everything in its path. The camera comes back down, after the fire has passed to show the ashes of the trees and brush, and the crispy body of the bird. The scene fades to black. In bold white letters the screen shows:
LIBERAL ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIES:
COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE
DANGERIOUS
DEADLY
It is sad this advertisement will never be produced, much less aired.
MARK A SITY
http://www.logic101.net/
Bullcrap. There are those who don't, but there are many in federal agencies who are just as brainwashed as the RICOnuts are. Consider the AFSEEE. Don't you remember who was shutting down the Jarbridge road?
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