 GUEST OPINION It’s July. It is Hot, Hazy, and Humid And I Haven’t Heard A Word About Global Warming! It wasn’t that many years ago I would know it was summer by the aroma of back yard barbeque grills; cold watermelon right from the ice house; whirring electric fans; the clatter of children’s flip flops; abundant displays of red, white and blue; fire works; sugar in the bottom of a sweating iced tea glass; T-shirts, shorts, and sunglasses. These days, summer is ushered in by environmentalists decrying the SUV as an evil symbol of an energy greedy America. They warn that an awful specter of global warming is looming and we will all die if something (preferably draconian) isn’t done immediately! So accustomed have I become to this perennial harangue that I could hardly believe my ears when I realized that this year I was hearing none of it. I don’t mean me rejecting it; I mean literally hearing nothing of it. No evil SUVs, no global warming, no disparaging America; nothing on this issue but silence. And that silence is speaking volumes. Something is different this summer and that difference just might be a new skepticism for at least some environmentalist claims. At one time, the public seemed to take any environmental claim, no matter how wild, hook, line, and sinker. For example, as an April 1st joke a few years ago, a radio station solemnly announced that the local water supply was loaded with H2O! The announcement went on to warn that excessive consumption of H2O was detrimental to human health! The gag brought on a flurry of phone calls from distraught viewers, not only to the station, but to city hall, as well. Today, serious questions are being asked by more and more people about the cost and efficacy of proposed environmental remedies. Even the main stream press is no longer giving the environmental proponents a blanket free pass. Questioning environmental reason no longer results in counter accusations of being a filthy, stinking ravager of Mother Nature who is motivated solely by avarice. At least if the charge is made it’s not likely to stick. But if this is indeed a change in the general public’s attitude, given past history, how could it possibly turn about and do it so suddenly? Well, the answer is not a simple one. In brief, this change, appears to have come from a nexus of environmental hyperbole, ever more strident environmental demands that are just as ever more costly, and a fundamental element of unfairness. All of this is laid on a foundation of questionable environmental policy that, in turn, is based on a science that is increasingly being criticized as “junk”. In other words, the environmentalists have been making enemies and that enemy list has grown to critical mass. This article is the first of a periodic series that will explore the debates raging over some of the most controversial environmental issues and offer analysis into the economic and political issues residing in the background. “The West Is Burning” One of the problems with the environmental movement has been its hyperbole. Their protestations have just been much too shrill and far too transparently political for the public to always take them seriously. And some of the claims have been downright contradictory. Take, for example, last year’s summer of forest fires. The question through much of the press was why is the west burning down? Because of strident anti-logging policies, that single question shot through Sierra Club’s armor like a Hell-fire missile. Those anti-logging policies have every appearance of making vulnerable the very forests they claimed to protect. According to a Sierra Club “Forest Fire Fact Sheet”: · Forest fires are beneficial to forest health · The National Forest Service policies have allowed forests to become choked with brush and debris (otherwise known as “fuel”) that elevates fire severity · Among the list of solutions, the Sierra Club recommended “restoring the natural role of forest fires to forest ecosystems with prescribed burns” · Prescribed burns are favored because they “leave no timber commodity” so there is no “economic incentive” (read no wood harvesting) · Protect forests from commercial logging by banning forest road construction · A prohibition on forest roads would not decrease public access to National Forests Sierra Club estimates that of 192 million acres of National Forests only 60 million acres are unprotected roadless areas. The Wild Forest Protection Plan aims to maintain a permanent ban on forest road construction. Other than the prohibition on even salvage wood harvesting, the above points would casually seem to make good sense. However, critics of the Sierra Club and other environmental groups purported to protect the nation’s forest tell a different story. In a Political Economy Research Center (PERC) July 2002 opinion piece, The Center for Free Market Environmentalism complains that Sierra Club, Wilderness Society, Center for Biological Diversity, The Southwest Forest Alliance, and other environmental groups only offer lip service to thinning small trees and prescribed burns. In particular, PERC claims that the Sierra Club and Forest Guardians contributed to Arizona’s fuel build up reaching “dangerous levels” by opposing a logging and restorative thinning plan of the Greater Flagstaff Forests Partnership. The Partnership is an Arizona consortium of federal, state, and local organizations. The Partnership proposed thinning Arizona forests by cutting trees up to 16 inches in diameter but leaving 60 to 80 trees per acre after the thinning. This technique had been tried in Colorado’s Manitou Experimental Forest with good result; when the 137,000 acre Hayman fire reached this forest, the fire cut through the grasses and ground cover but spared the large Ponderosa pines. The Greater Flagstaff ecological restoration work was held up by administrative appeals and litigation from May 5, 1999 to January 3, 2001. Over 500,000 acres of Arizona forests ultimately burned in 2002 destroying over 500 homes. Part of the controversy is over the method of thinning. While the Sierra Club publicly supports thinning by prescribed burns, other forest management advocates also support cutting trees and harvesting dead, or burned wood. Cutting and harvesting is verboten according to the environmentalist Zero Cut Policy. In other words, public forests will not have trees harvested for any reason, even if they are remnants of a previous fire or otherwise salvageable dead wood. Furthermore, to discourage logging, environmentalists demand that roads not be built, even if that would aid in getting fire fighters and fire fighting equipment into the deep forests. Environmentalist defense is that forest fires are good. Indeed, they argue, forest fires are “natural” and 2002’s summer of fires was not historically significant. The air pollution, loss of valuable forest land, wildlife, and wildlife habitat does not seem to be a problem for them. Then again, the raging wildfires of 2002 also brought a loss of human life and hundreds of homes severely damaged or burned to the ground. Zero Cut arguably has brought not just homes but entire communities into danger from forest fires because thinning has become restricted. To the families affected the environmentalist’s zero cut policy doesn’t just appear to be contradictory to forest health, it seems arbitrary, unjust, and insensitive to human needs. Hence, the environmental movement has disenchanted an ever growing number of western voters. It should be noted that in 2002, 7,182,979 acres burned and another 7,182,979 burned in 2001. To put that is context; Ohio has a total of only about 7.9 million acres of forest and park land and Mississippi has about 18.5 million. In the next installment we will see how environmental economic and political agendas, in its encroachment upon personal freedom national security, have drawn environmental battles along political party lines. Perry Hicks is a former Mississippi Coast resident and was a correspondent for the old Gulfport Star Journal. He has appeared on Fox News Channel’s “The O’Reilly Factor.” Perry has also hosted his own radio talk show on the auto industry with a mix of politics, and is a former Ford Motor Company technical trainer. He currently works as an Associate Professor of Automotive Technology at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College in Richmond, VA. Contact the Author: royalenfieldcrusader@hotmail.com |