Posted on 02/27/2008 4:34:54 PM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
KALISPELL, MT - A string of red-hot wildfire seasons has claimed millions of Western forest acres and not a few homes and lives, and Mike Dubrasich reckons he's figured out at least part of the solution for future summers:
“If you know a Sierra Club member, please feel free to set their home on fire.”
That's the suggestion - “I'm suggesting it, but I'm not advocating it” - Dubrasich posted on his Web site last week. * “Personally,” said Bob Clark, “I thought that was a little over the top.”
Clark is a Sierra Club representative based out of Missoula, and he keeps a whole file of death threats in his office. Some have been forwarded to the FBI, some to the state attorney general, some to the Montana Human Rights Network.
He doesn't place Dubrasich's post in the “death threat category,” but it did catch his attention.
“You shouldn't have to live in your community in fear of your neighbors,” Clark said. “We live in a civil society. There are other avenues besides burning someone's house down.”
And on that, Dubrasich couldn't agree more.
Dubrasich, of Lebanon, Ore., describes himself as a forester, a consultant and a blogger, among other things. His Web network - the Western Institute for Study of the Environment - includes 11 separate sites. Eight are what he calls “educational colloquia,” all about forests and fires and wildlife and paleobotany and rural culture. The others are a mix of news and commentary, clippings and first-person opinion pieces.
It was one of those opinions - posted Feb. 20 on the “SOS Forests” portion of his site - that caught Clark's attention.
The post was in response to a news item about a lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club, arguing the government was breaking its own rules by not adequately assessing the environmental impacts of small timber harvests.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled in favor of the Sierra Club, saying the Forest Service could no longer use “categorical exclusions” to evade environmental analysis.
Although the injunction on categorical exclusion projects is not yet official, it could put a stop to many timber sales, particularly small sales designed to thin forests and protect homes from wildfire.
That ruling infuriated Dubrasich, whose response was titled “Ninth Court and the Sierra Club are slime ball arsonists.”
The way he sees it, such suits only increase the risk of people being burned out of their homes. And so he suggests fighting fire with fire.
“It seems the Sierra Club is up to their old sick tricks of burning down America's forests and all the neighboring private property, too,” Dubrasich wrote. “The raging arsonist commies at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals share the slime pit. If you know a Sierra Club member, please feel free to set their home on fire.”
He calls the court “wacky commie judges hell-bent on destroying America,” and suggests “they should be spit upon whenever they go out in public.”
The Sierra Club is “an abomination and toxic to the environment,” he writes, adding that “if the fire devastates a forest, ruins a watershed, burns private homes, and kills people, then they applaud. That's exactly the kind of fires they desire. Anarchy and Revolution courtesy of America-haters, and nature be damned.”
The judges also “yearn for” large “catastrophic holocausts that incinerate vast tracts,” Dubrasich writes. “The powdered wig set are twisted sickos, romping in chambers like French poodles.”
In previous posts, Dubrasich has accused Forest Service Chief Gail Kimbell of advocating “holocaust and takeover, destruction of homes, farms, whole communities, and indeed our American culture and society.”
It's strong language, intended to get a rise from readers, but it's not the sort of thing that Clark worries much about. Until, that is, Dubrasich suggested torching the homes of Sierra Club members.
“I don't think that this guy himself would be a threat to any of our members,” Clark said. “But what worries me are the people he might incite. Typically, the ones who say it the loudest aren't the ones to do it. But who knows what some reader might do?”
The Sierra Club, with some 2,000 members in Montana, is a pretty big target for an angry arsonist, Clark said.
“So,” said Dubrasich, “how's it feel? Right back at you.”
By which he means that environmentalist lawsuits have hampered efforts to thin forests, resulting in big hot fires that “escape from the federal estate” to ravage private property and, sometimes, lives.
“Nothing I've said ever hurt anybody,” Dubrasich said, “but their fires are actually killing people dead.”
And that, Clark said, is where Dubrasich has it all wrong, right from the beginning.
“He's connecting dots that don't exist,” Clark said. “He's finding an easy culprit and making scapegoats, but he's starting from a place of falsity. Show me the timber sale that was held up in litigation, and that later burned hotter because the forest was not treated. Show me the home that was lost to that kind of litigation. Show me the acres. It doesn't exist.”
Clark points to big Montana fires - the Jocko Lakes and Chippy fires, as well as others - and says many of those acres had been cut heavily in the past. Neither area was targeted for thinning that was stalled in the courts.
“What we should be talking about are things like drought and climate change and the number of homes being built in the woods,” Clark said. “Instead, we're talking about putting a match to my house.”
The problem, Clark said, began when the White House authorized changes to the categorical exclusion rule. Those changes, he said, increased the number of acres that could be cut without full environmental review to 1,000, and also removed wording that said even categorical exclusion sales needed to take into account the cumulative effects of nearby projects.
The result: some forests were cobbling together eight or nine “excluded” sales in a single drainage, avoiding environmental review that would otherwise be required of a single large project.
“They were abusing the rule,” Clark said. “So who's the culprit? Is it the entity that's making the illegal rule change, or the entity that's abusing the rules, or the people who call them on it?”
In the end, however, Clark is far less concerned with the apparent disagreement over how and why the categorical exclusion rule was successfully challenged than he is about the hostile turn the rhetoric has taken.
“I've been threatened before,” he said. “Unfortunately, that's just part of the deal.”
Clark's had death threats over the phone, and through the mail, and his office has been vandalized. At one point, his 7-year-old son picked up the phone to hear a man screaming that he would blow his father's head off with a shotgun.
Up in the Flathead, a radio host has called environmentalists Nazis, and has burned green swastikas in protest. Conservationists there, too, have endured threats and vandalism.
And not too long ago, Clark said, a woman spoke in favor of wilderness at a Bitterroot National Forest meeting, prompting one man there to suggest someone ought to “put a bullet in her head.”
Forest officials there quickly changed their public meeting process, and began taking comments one-on-one inside federal offices.
“We in the environmental community are constantly painted as the so-called terrorists,” Clark said. “But take a look. Look where all the rhetoric of terror is coming from. It's just sad and unfortunate that people can't feel free to advocate for the future of their country without fearing for their lives.”
Clark admits radical environmentalists have been responsible for similarly provocative comments and actions, but he remains convinced “the solutions will come from people seeking common ground, not from the extremists on either side.”
But that, of course, comes straight from a man Dubrasich would call an extremist. Dubrasich believes nothing he has to say is as excessive as what the Sierra Club does, or what the mainstream media reports, for that matter.
And although both men claim to have the same intent - to facilitate the orderly thinning of forest lands near homes - they are going about it in very different ways.
“We don't have a bunch of attorneys,” Dubrasich said. “We don't have anything but our free speech. That's all we've got, and we're using it.”
Hopefully, Clark said, that's all they'll use. Because he, for one, sometimes wonders, late at night, whether the match might finally come.
“Look,” Dubrasich said, “you advocate burning my forest, I say feel free to burn your house.”
But he's certainly never burned anyone out, he said, and is only “taking it to the level where someone finally pays attention.”
Thanks for the ‘Heads Up’ on this one! :)
We need legions of lawyers onour side to figure out how to stifle them......
SC used to be a great organization, but like most others, has been hijacked by radicals.
Mostly they file lawsuits to end logging on public lands (lots of them, both individual chapters and the national club).
Below is start at figuring out who they are and who they support. You won’t see any Rs next to these candidates they support:
Congressional candidates endorsed by the Sierra Club are listed alphabetically, by state.
Key to the chart:
Party:
R = Republican
D = Democrat
I = Independent Seat:
I = Incumbent
C = Challenger
O = Open District:
AL = At Large
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
State District Candidate Party Seat Candidate’s Committee
CA 1 Thompson, Mike D I Mike Thompson for Congress
CA 9 Lee, Barbara D I Barbara Lee for Congress
CA 11 McNerney, Jerry D I McNerney for Congress Committee
CA 13 Stark, Fortney “Pete” D I Pete Stark Re-Election Committee
CA 14 Eshoo, Anna D I Eshoo for Congress Committee
CA 15 Honda, Mike D I Mike Honda for Congress
CA 23 Capps, Lois D I Friends of Lois Capps
CA 27 Sherman, Brad D I Sherman for Congress
CA 28 Berman, Howard D I Berman for Congress
CA 29 Schiff, Adam D I Schiff for Congress
CA 30 Waxman, Henry D I Congressman Waxman Campaign Committee
CA 31 Becerra, Xavier D I Becerra for Congress
CA 32 Solis, Hilda D I Solis for Congress
CA 33 Watson, Diane D I Diane E. Watson for Congress
CA 34 Roybal-Allard, Lucille D I Lucille Roybal-Allard for Congress
CA 35 Waters, Maxine D I Citizens for Waters
CA 36 Harman, Jane D I Friends of Jane Harman
CA 38 Napolitano, Grace D I Napolitano for Congress
CA 39 Sanchez, Linda D I Committee to Re-Elect Linda Sanchez
CA 47 Sanchez, Loretta D I Committee to Re-Elect Loretta Sanchez
CA 51 Filner, Bob D I Bob Filner for Congress
CA 53 Davis, Susan D I Susan Davis for Congress
MD 2 Ruppersberger, Dutch D I Dutch Ruppersberger for Congress Committee
MD 3 Sarbanes, John D I John Sarbanes for Congress
MD 4 Edwards, Donna D C Donna Edwards for Congress*
MD 5 Hoyer, Steny D I Hoyer for Congress Committee
MD 7 Cummings, Elijah D I Cummings for Congress
MD 8 Van Hollen, Chris D I Van Hollen for Congress
NJ 1 Andrews, Robert D I Andrews for Congress
NJ 2 LoBiondo, Frank R I LoBiondo for Congress, Inc.
NJ 3 Adler, John D C John Adler for Congress, Inc.
NJ 8 Pascrell, William D I Pascrell for Congress
NJ 9 Rothman, Steve D I Steve Rothman for New Jersey, Inc.
NJ 10 Payne, Donald D I Donald Payne for Congress
NJ 12 Holt, Rush D I Rush Holt for Congress, Inc.
WI 2 Baldwin, Tammy D I Tammy Baldwin for Congress
WI 3 Kind, Ron D I Kind for Congress
WI 4 Moore, Gwen D I Gwen Moore for Congress
WI 7 Obey, David D I A Lot of People for David Obey
WI 8 Kagen, Steve D I Kagen 4 Congress
Why aren’t some states listed?
Paid for by Sierra Club Political Committee, www.sierraclub.org, and authorized by the candidate and candidate’s committee listed above.
* Paid for by Sierra Club Political Committee, www.sierraclub.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.
For more information, please e-mail us at political.desk@sierraclub.org.
Look forward to seeing the comments tomorrow, they should be fun. I’m beat, had a late night last night and hitting the bed early.
No doubt some people will be angered in the next forest fire season, and they will seek satisfaction. Since Sierra Club has already gone to court and won, it's unlikely anyone can gain satisfaction through the same courts.
Could be a deadly sitution unless some cooler heads get involved ~
I was asleep by 8pm last night, LOL!
I sooooooo want to ping a few, that claim to be conservative, SC supporters to this, but I don’t want to start a huge bru-ha-ha.
However, if they see it, they will come; much like on the smoking ban threads. *Rolleyes*
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