ArchPundit

Pulling out the old canard that environmentalists oppose forest thinning, Beck blames the fires in Southern California on them.

This is wrong, as the links you can follow over at Think Progress pretty well demonstrate.  What environmentalists have sued over are plans to cut down larger diameter trees that don’t contribute to the fire danger.  Brush is the biggest danger to fires and it accumulates and in a natural process, fire clears it out occasionally.

The sins of forest mismanagement go way back, but the Bush administration couldn’t help, but try and make it actually worse with the Healthy Forest Initiative. An impressive feat, but there is truly no policy area this administration couldn’t try and screw up.

Environmentalists have sued over some projects, but not because they are designed to thin the forest, but because instead of concentrating on small trees and brush, the plans were essentially designed to allow for logging of larger trees which don’t generally create much of a danger in a fire unless the brush is present.  When attempts have been made to restrict the diameter of trees to be cut, the Bush administration has balked and then stalemate set in.

Of course, controlled burns that are another method of controlling the underbrush are often opposed by locals or big timber.  Go figure.

While we cannot say any single event is due to global warming, more of these kinds of fires will occur as global warming continues.  If forest policy isn’t created that reduces underbrush through actual thinning and not just an excuse for logging and the automatic effort to put out every fire isn’t adapted to allow fires when they are likely to be controlled, this will only be the first of many episodes exactly like this throughout the west.