Posted on 07/03/2002 12:10:45 PM PDT by gordgekko
It's too late to ask why the west is burning, everyone already knows it is the result of absurd environmental policies that have prevented logging to thin the fuel; the "roadless" policy that prevents firefighters from having access to the forests; and the Endangered Species Act, that won't allow heavy equipment in critical habitat to cut firebreaks.
When volunteers brought their own equipment to help fight the Colorado fire, Kim Martin, the Incident Commander for the Forest Service, told the volunteers, "The equipment is too heavy. It will tear up the land." The volunteers could do nothing but watch the forests burn.
Every environmental organization that has sued, or lobbied to prevent logging, and to close forest roads, should be required to man the front lines against every wildfire that burns.
The smoke rising from West of the Mississippi raises another, bigger question: why does the federal government own most of the land in the West in the first place?
America was built on the principle of free enterprise, which begins with private ownership of land and resources. Nearly half of America is now owned by the government - federal, state, and local. How can free enterprise exist if government owns the land and resources?
Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution sets forth clearly the purposes for which the federal government may purchase land "...with the consent of the Legislature" of the state in which the land is located, "for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dock-yards, and other needful buildings;"
There's not a word in the Constitution about the 400,000 scorched acres in Arizona, or the 200,000 acres wasted in Colorado, or the two million acres that have burned this year. Why does the federal government own it?
Until early in the 20th century, the land owned by the federal government was the object of divestiture. The prevailing view was to acquire land for U.S. citizens, but to get it into private hands as quickly as possible. That's why we had a Homestead Act that encouraged people to move west.
Green groups, notably, the Wilderness Society, caught up in fashionable socialism, agitated for the nationalization of all forests, and continued pressing government to end the land give-away, and finally, to lock up all the land that remained in the federal estate. Why?
Years ago, the reason given was to ensure that U.S. citizens would have the wood, minerals, and other resources needed by a growing nation. No more. Green groups have all but stopped logging, mining, and even grazing on federal land. Wilderness and Monument designations have locked out humans from hundreds of millions of acres of this so-called public land.
Now, the fashionable excuse for federal ownership is "to protect biodiversity." The biodiversity in Arizona and Colorado, and the rest of the West, can not afford to be protected by the feds.
There is no legitimate reason for the federal government to own a third of all the land in the United States. If it is right and good for the feds to own 83 percent of Nevada, why, then, should the feds not own 83 percent of New York, or Pennsylvania? It makes no sense. States can manage their own land better than the feds. Private owners can manage their land better than any government.
Divestiture of the federal estate is not a new idea. Many fine politicians have met their doom by trying to promote this idea. Politicians, though, tend to sway in the breeze of public opinion. In the last half of the 20th century, hot air emissions from green extremists have increasingly kept the political tiller turned toward the absurd.
Looking at the charred ruin of wasted forests and roasted wildlife, to say nothing of the ashes of hundreds of homes, it's time to step back and seriously ask, why do we continue to allow the federal government to hold title to our land?
The federal land in which private citizens have a property right - either water, grazing, logging, mining, or whatever, should be offered for sale first, to those individuals. All other federal land, which does not qualify under Article I, Section 8, should be relinquished to the state in which the land lies, for disposition by the state.
The rush to acquire more and more land for "open space," should be halted, and reversed. In a free enterprise society, the market will provide the open space that the people want.
Green pressure groups have been successful in their efforts to transform America from a free
enterprise society, into the socialist society envisioned by the Wilderness Society in the 1930s. It's no longer called a socialist vision, it's now called a vision of sustainability. Call it what you will. A society in which government owns the sources of production, and controls the use of private land is not a free society.
It's time for government to get out of the real estate business.
Henry Lamb is the executive vice president of the Environmental Conservation Organization, and chairman of Sovereignty International.
The agenda is seed. The dozers and heavy equipment carry weeds. The wackjobs fear them for that reason and rightly so. The problem with that idea is that boots, backpacks, tents, and tarps carry weeds too. The net effect of all that caution is to make things worse by increasing the acreage and number of sites exposed to entry by firefighters from all over the country.
Fuel management always was the correct tool and these turkeys are now in over their heads.
Everybody says it, but they don't know it -- because it's not really true. The way Lamb puts it, it's as if big fires only happened only after environmentalists changed the policies -- which is categorically false.
And when he decries the lack of fire roads and the ESA's constraints on building fire breaks, Lamb himself is guilty of perpetuating the very problems he claims to want to solve. After all, the primary human contribution to the forest fire problem is not a result of logging policy, but of putting out fires, which allows the buildup of the understory.
But even this is an exercise in human arrogance, of the same sort that informs the global warming debate. It's not as if the understory never built up before the USFS came into being, and it's not as if immense and destructive fires never occurred without our help.
As with global warming, natural phenomena are being blamed on humanity in order to further a political agenda.
Whether or not we agree with Lamb's basic premise is beside the point: he's demagoguing us, and he shouldn't be.
Your reply:
The agenda is seed. The dozers and heavy equipment carry weeds. The wackjobs fear them for that reason and rightly so. The problem with that idea is that boots, backpacks, tents, and tarps carry weeds too. The net effect of all that caution is to make things worse by increasing the acreage and number of sites exposed to entry by firefighters from all over the country.
So due to their fear of weeds, they will let 200,000 acres burn up instead using dozers to break in some real fire lanes. With these big fires and the fuel build up, manpower is not enough to contain let alone control these fires. Heavy equipment is needed! These slimey bastards are even worse than I have thought.
Your final part of your reply:
Fuel management always was the correct tool and these turkeys are now in over their heads.
They are obviously over their heads and have placed a large part of this country's population and forests in a Clear and Present Danger.
The al Qaeda terrorists must just set back and say go Club Sierra! You are so effective in harming America/Americans!
Yyyyup, but that's only part of it. It's the reason the wack-jobs on the ground fear the dozers.
With these big fires and the fuel build up, manpower is not enough to contain let alone control these fires.
Yyyup, they don't want them contained.
These slimey bastards are even worse than I have thought.
Yyyyyup. Worse, and it starts at the top.
Here's the message I've been telling everybody here for a couple of years now: International Paper, Georgia Pacific, Weyerhauser Group, Crown Paper, et al. want to make money on their forests. They have forests all over the world: Morocco, New Zealand, Canada, Eastern Europe, Russia... The world's forests produce more lumber, paper, and pulp than anybody can use at least at a price they want to get for their goods. To get high prices the big guys need a shortage.
It works just like the California Power Crisis Dave.
You shouldn't be surprised since the game is driven by the class of people with the lobbyists to get it done (you do know that Mark Rey's last job was as a lobbyist with the American Forest & Paper Association?). The folks in charge of the USFS are more than happy to oblige. They can make both the corporate world and the environmentalists happy, and they don't have to risk their people's necks any more than they have to (when a firefighter dies it makes for bad press). It was no different under Dombeck. It's democracy at its finest.
That's what a socialized commons can do.
Henry is right. Private property is the answer. He just doesn't know how to make it happen. The problem is: How should the land be managed for all its attributes so that a guy can make a buck taking care of nature and provide the range of products the public demands?
That's what I created Dave. It's not that radical because it can start on a small scale and grow. The good news is that for the system to optimize the market will be too complex for the big guys or the government to handle. It's a good niche for the small property owner, farmer, and rancher, although those roles will start to overlap as the system matures. It's an abstract idea, and is hard to generalize (as my book sadly proves), but in microcosm it is very simple.
I really don't understand why it's been so hard a sell. What's the alternative?
Freedom Is Worth Fighting For !!
Molon Labe !!
To steal Daschole's Airport Screener quote, "In order to professionalize,you have to privatize".
Thanks for the Ping GD, this is great. Carry, you have just hastened my purchase of your book.
We have a convert, and that is how it has to work. We have to find the key people, thoughtful leaders who care more about outcomes than ideology, and teach them one by one. They have to bring the rest in their cadres along, and when they need help we had better show up.
You would be surprised how many leftists find my work appealing once they see the corporate fascism running the Slave Party. They recoil in fear and have no place to go. This idea is a place to go with their love of nature that respects their individual rights and allows them to make a buck (something that they rediscover when confronted with reality).
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