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Pseudo - a person who makes deceitful pretenses.
This article, an example of the histrionics pointed out elsewhere regarding the reversal of a Clinton Administration restriction on road building on federal lands, demonstrates the deceitfulness of a destructive segment of the environmental community.
The roadless rule, implemented in the final month of the Clinton administration, protects the last remaining untouched wilderness in the American national-forest system -- roughly 60 million of the 190 million acres of national forest -- from mining, drilling, and development.But it doesn't protect the forests from fire - a far, far more dire and immanent threat. The concept of "untouched wilderness" is a simple minded social construction that is both historically and ecologically deluded. This isn't an innocent or harmless quirk of an indifferently educated though vocal political group. It is an intentional deceit for political gain by groups willing to destroy the forests to gain power. They are politicians posing as environmentalists, pseudo-environmentalists.
It was a tragic though more understandable error in the 1870's when it began. When John Wesley Powell attempted to evaluate those western lands after the end of the civil war (in which he lost an arm) they were still territories governed by eastern politicians that had no idea whatsoever what they were governing. In their ignorance and arrogance they simply refused to credit Powell's reports and recommendations. The west has been grossly mismanaged ever since then, including the Clinton administration's lame duck orders in the last month of the term.
That mismanagement became far more dangerous and destructive in the 1930's when FDR began a campaign to fight forest fire. It was a death sentence for fire adapted western forests and they have been dying ever since. Now they are overpopulated, choked with dead trees, infested with killing insects and diseases, and weakened by starvation and thirst. It isn't innocent, it is criminal neglect.
Nature has a cure - total destruction by fire. The forests are now so choked with fuel that fires don't just blow through cleaning the floor and helping seedlings germinate, they burn so hot that they kill everything, even the soil. The soil then erodes, silting up water courses and killing everything that managed to survive the fire.
The problem became acute 20 years ago and it will get worse in future. Much of the west is now in the drought phase of multi-decadal climate changes driven by sea surface temperature cycles in the Pacific ocean. Though there will be wet years the next 25 years will be droughty. Forests that are already dying of thirst due to fire suppression induced overpopulation are going on even shorter rations for a couple of decades. If we hadn't paid them to do this we'd call it vandalism.
This isn't a secret. Clinton and those who lobbied for his last minute orders were fully aware of these issues. That's why it wasn't done until the last minute. They knew that the next administration would have to change them, which could then be used, as it is now being used, as political ammunition. Forests can't be managed and fires can't be fought without roads. The anti-humanist concept of de-peopled wilderness held by the extremists that have captured the Democratic party (as some religious groups have captured the Republicans), precludes forest management, guaranteeing the destruction of the forests.
This is as much a problem for Democrats as the rest of society. They are in the awkward position of having to pay lip service to dumb policies while doing their partisan duty yet trying to sneak some sensible assertions into their speeches. This article about Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski is an example. [via: AboutItAll]
Gov. Ted Kulongoski took to national television Tuesday to deride a new Bush administration policy on roadless national forests as misguided, surprising environmental activists who said they had been pressing him to take such a stand.Those better forest management practices require roads, but instead of making intellectually honest statements that rescinding Clinton's idiotic lame duck order was a first step to necessary reform, Kulongoski was obliged to bend the knee to extremist supporters and take a few whacks at the Bush pinata.But the Oregon Democrat also took his appearance on "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" in another direction, pressing for greater state authority over federal lands.
"I think (there) will only be better forest management practices if the state actually ends up in some responsible role where we actually have some control over the management practices," he said Tuesday night.
We need a real Green party, one that is animated by environmental and socio-ecological concerns rather than the priggish anti-humanists who call themselves Green now. They are more accurately the Grey party, anhedonic nutters preferring to see the forests burn to the ground rather than see anybody being happy, healthy and comfortable. If Kulongoski was beholden to a truly green constituency his political gyrations could be more sensible advocacy for local control to achieve superior levels of environmental care. He could take Bush to task for doing too little, neglecting national forests while he engaged in international expeditions.
There are those, such as Thomas Frank, who argue that this is a truer expression of the Democratic party, once the party of working Americans seeking an equitable share of the good life. It has lost its way and become a minority force by abandoning working Americans in pursuit of a culture war not supported by those workers. This is especially relevant to conservation issues since those Americans live and work (or at least seek work, they're not doing so well lately) in the less urban heart of the country where many national parks are located.
There are also those who argue that conservation is an inherently conservative issue and a truer expression of the Republican party, once the party of preservation that lost its way in the New Deal era, abandoning its principles while waging a long campaign of resistance to the totalitarianism that ravaged Europe and infected America to a lesser extent, personified for them by FDR and the New Deal expansion of the federal government. Further expansion by Johnson's Great Society drove them over the edge.
Now we have a confused alignment of interests that places the old Democratic working base in the Republican party, which continues to resist expansion of the Federal government. Even worse, beginning in 1962 environmentalism was intentionally politicized by the Democrats. Both parties are now working against the environment though they could both be working for it.
We bungled expansion of America into the territories of the west in the 1870s. The main problem was a refusal to actually look at the places and develop policies appropriate to them. In addition to human rights tragedies with native populations, a directly related failure, there have been repeated and continuing environmental failures. The trauma of the Dust Bowl era may be repeated in this era but the drought enhanced problem this time will be wild fire.
It's time to drop the petty politics and take care of business. It's time to ignore the squealing extremists and develop sensible policies. It's time for sensible people of every political and ideological persuasion to insist that their representatives work to develop policies to restore western lands and forests and preserve them in future. This isn't something that can just be hired out, that some daddy can just take care of. It is the responsibility of each community to take charge of its own environment and do the hard expensive things needed to restore it. It's time to finally tell the eastern politicians to bugger off. The people that live and work in the regions know more, care more, and will bear the consequences. They have the responsibility whether they acknowledge it or not. They have the power whether they acknowledge it or not. Policies can be changed to reflect those realities. They should be.