CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Adding  Fuel to the Fire: The Forest Service’s Fuel Reduction Strategy

Logging on the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

Most of the West’s perennial wildfire plague is due to human stupidity. But it’s not just the careless people who start the fires, it’s also all the people that voted for politicians who ignored the climate crisis or called it a hoax. The primary risk factor  for increased wildfire vulnerability is hotter, drier forests. Were it not for major election interference by Jeb Bush, and a nakedly partisan Supreme Court, we would have had Al Gore as President, and America might have led the world away from a suicidal leap off the cliff of climate disaster. But at least we were saved from having a “wooden personality” in the White House.

Instead, 26 years later, chasing America’s bumbling descent into psychotic irrationality, much of the world has also thrown in the towel on preserving an inhabitable climate. We have a President who is so malevolently abusive to the environment he is grabbing the planet by the pussy, spending billions bribing companies to sabotage clean energy.

But as long as we have all paid dearly for front row seats to this UFCSC (Ultimate Fighting Climate Stupidity Championships) cage match, let’s take a look at another contender, the US Forest Service. For decades the agency has peddled a fairy tale that Western forests are morbidly dense and unhealthy because they have put out too many fires over the last 90 years, and that’s why we have so many, massive forest fires. Solution? 1.“Fuels reduction treatments” and 2. “Prescribed burns.” The euphemisms are deliberately crafted to make you think our forests are sick, and the Forest Service “doctor” will make house calls to do forest CPR. And for good measure, this medicine will also protect your home in the forest.

This is wildfire management........

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