Politics and wildfires
Don Brunell offers simplistic solutions to our horrendous fires: increase “thinning, salvaging, and logging” (“Time to revisit managing our forests,” Sept. 19).
He implies managing forests will suffice. No nod — unlike the USFS, NASA and the DOD — to global warming bringing droughts, decreased snowpacks, higher temperatures and winds.
Brunell also ignores the pressures of human populations: housing developments bordering forests, sprawling transportation systems, and human behaviors causing nearly 90% of fires.
Kathleen Parker admits forest management alone won’t reduce fierce fires because global warming contributes (“What we’re doing hasn’t worked,” Sept. 16). Parker advocates a dream team of scientists, “to the exclusion of politicians.” I submit the opposite: we need myriad political processes to bring combinations of citizens, native peoples, civil servants, elected officials, forestry experts, investors, programmers, plus scientists together to address issues:
1) Deforestation, which affects
2) diminishing water tables and aquifers,
3) soil erosion, salinization, desertification, and
4) atmospheric carbon.
5) Us! How we build on earth: land use, infrastructure, density, design, distances to water, fire equipment …
The market hasn’t brought solutions. Politicians, planners, developers, and locals will need to get involved with scientists as happened 30 years ago with Washington Growth Management. America needs a massive infusion of public processes for the public good in forming policies and weighing pathways. We require integrity in leadership at all levels.
Give Joe Biden credit for seeing realities: change or suffer more intense floods, fire, famine. Drought, disease, depression. Lost livelihoods. Lost lives. Our blue marble requires a global approach. Choose a future that works for more than a favored few. Quell the flames, choose Biden.
Carol Ellis
Spokane