The worst might be over for yet another smoke-clogged Montana fire season. Might. Rains the weekend prior to Labor Day took the sharp edge off some pretty scary scenarios in northwest Montana, but we all know from bitter experience, fire season isn’t really over until the snows.
As things go nationwide, 2018 in on pace with 2017, just 300,000 acres or so short of last year’s 6.8 million acres burnt. California, obviously, was worst hit, with 834,000 acres torched, including hundreds of homes in residential neighborhoods, mainly in the quarter-million acre Carr fire – and yep, in 2017 over a thousand homes burnt. And these two years follow the 8-million-acre 2015, which was a smoky, record-setting mess.
So, will 2019 bring more of the same? After all, voters are fickle and the new TV lineups will be on soon, paid for by stupid election attack ads. But there are some signs of hope.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke was pilloried in the news media for having the temerity to write a widely distributed column (USA Today ran it) on Aug. 8, where he called for proactive measures that he then wrote would be inevitably “attacked by frivolous litigation from radical environmentalists who would rather see forests and communities burn than see a logger in the woods.”
That upset Greens and much of the anti-Trump left, of course, but it wasn’t until, during a visit to California, he doubled down in an interview on the right-wing Breitbart Sirius XM 125 show Aug. 13, declaring that projects are being “held hostage by […] environmental terrorist groups.” Can you say tizzy? Oh, my.
But Zinke is right. Too many Greens are misanthropic anti-capitalists who would, if given the choice, burn a forest flat to save it from “exploitation,” as in the “action of making use or benefiting from resources.”
Then, about a week after Secretary Zinke annoyed Greens, he was affirmed in a back-handed way by none other than California Gov. Jerry Brown. On the 23rd, Brown was reported to have proposed legislation that would allow small landowners (under 300 acres) to cut trees up to 36 inches, a 10-inch increase, and build temporary access roads up to 600 feet long, both without a permit.
Under current California law, a “permit” entails what the San Jose Mercury News described as reaching “hundreds of pages and cost[ing] tens of thousands of dollars,” which furthermore is a public document, subject to public hearings and approval by two separate state agencies.
Unfortunately, California’s Legislature adjourned on the 31st for the year. Furthermore, Brown’s 16 years as governor will be over after the 2018 election, so Brown’s belated proposal is too little, too late.
Nonetheless, when a politician like “Moonbeam” Brown (I lived in California during his first stint as governor 40 years ago) finally shows a flicker of sanity, even in his final month in power, that’s hopeful.
Maybe Americans at large are finally getting it. Wildfire is not all good, not all natural. Wildfires have consequences, too often bad and long-lasting.
The victims of the suburban California fires lost not just their homes, but untold family heirlooms that are gone forever. That’s going to create some pretty strong, long-lasting viewpoints about the role of fire on both developed and natural landscapes.
Right here, last year the century-old Sperry Chalet went up in a flash, needlessly. This year, the Howe Ridge burn trashed another bunch of human heritage, and it remains to be seen if fall winds don’t finish the job either at Apgar or Lake McDonald Lodge – or both.
Never mind for at least the third year out of four, Glacier National Park’s star attraction, Logan Pass, has been shut down during prime season. Even when the road has been open, prime season has been utterly smoked out for what, seven of the past nine years? By levels of airborne smut that would cause riots if “manmade?” How might people feel after traveling thousands of miles through haze, returning home with brown-tinted selfies of nothing?
Well, I hope they feel a little smarter, and vote for a Congress that is a bit smarter – that’s my miracle.