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Common Sense - The Fire and Smoke Policy |
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Written by Kevin Hanley
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One of the oldest and most dishonest tricks in the debate game is to launch an ad hominem attack on your opponent. Ad hominem is a Latin phrase that means attacking an opponent’s character rather than answering his argument.
Greg King, executive director of the Northcoast Environmental Center in Arcata, provides in his column, “A Cynical Drumbeat for More Logging” (Sacramento Bee, Aug. 24, 2008 edition), a classic illustration of protecting a weak policy argument by instead attacking the motives of his opponents. Mr. King’s column was in reaction to “California Burning,” a Summit on Wildfire Prevention conducted by the California State Legislative Rural Caucus in the State Capitol building on Aug. 13.
Mr. King lambastes calls by Congressman Herger, State Senator Aanestad and Assemblyman La Malfa for common sense changes in state and federal regulations to allow for the removal of dangerous wood fuel and underbrush from our overcrowded and unhealthy forests as “cynical” ploys to increase logging in old-growth forests. Look out! There’s Paul Bunyan and an evil timber company behind every pine tree!
What’s Mr. King’s solution? Let the forests burn. Apparently the thousands of fires that we have endured so far this year is just dandy. He says in his column that we should let the wildfires burn and he would even ban salvage logging when there is no forest left. Without questioning Mr. King’s motives, his “burn baby burn” policy is destructive to our quality of life, our economy and the environment.
I was fortunate enough to be given an opportunity to testify at the Summit on Wildfire Prevention. A parade of impressive witnesses, from the California State Fire Marshall, county supervisors, retired administrators from the U.S. Forest Service, farmers, ranchers, hospital administrators, fire safe councils, and individual homeowners who saw their homes ignite and explode spoke about how our current forest policies are devastating local economies, putting lives and property at risk, and turning forests into moonscapes. As a member of the Auburn City Council for the last six years and as Chairman of the Auburn Area Fire Safe Council, I shared with lawmakers my view that our current de facto policy of preventing man from being a good steward of our forestlands is a complete waste. Our current policy of treating man as an alien in the forest threatens the lives of firefighters and residents, causes tons of toxic smoke and greenhouse gases to fill the air, destroys animals and their habitat, obliterates good-paying jobs, and raises the price of housing. Biomass, an excellent source of renewable American energy, goes up in smoke. I told the lawmakers how our current failed policies threaten Auburn because inmate crews who are supposed to maintain the shaded fuel break on the American River Canyon ridge are always called away to fight fires around the state.
The status quo of our current “Fire and Smoke Policy” is unacceptable. We have tried it for the last 100 years and it has failed. Instead, we need far-reaching reforms of our forestry policy at both the state and federal level to promote sustainable forests that will improve our quality of life and our environment.
Kevin Hanley serves on the Auburn City Council and as Chairman of the Greater Auburn Area Fire Safe Council. Send your comments to Kevin at
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Well there is now Hell to pay along with urban environmentalists who have envaded the rural areas with their detrimental views. Now the Forest Service has seen the error of their ways, but we now have a political juggernaught known as the Greens. On top of that our population has exploded here in the Golden state with more and more people deciding to build homes within the now fire prone areas. First we have got to put a stop to psuedo green science and then we can begin to look at ways for people to safely populate the fire prone areas.