4 ms·
Though it may not seem like it at first, the problem is ideological. Somewhere along the line CA's left/progressive ideology picked up a deeply ironic tenet tha
by svrb 6y ago
Though it may not seem like it at first, the problem is ideological. Somewhere along the line CA's left/progressive ideology picked up a deeply ironic tenet that the world must remain absolutely unchanged by human habitation; that whatever the state of nature was on some arbitrary day in the past, we have a moral duty to keep it that way. The strongest example of overreach is that absolutely no species may go extinct, no matter how ill-suited to survival they may be (I'm looking at you, pandas). Other examples that are probably entirely defensible on rational grounds are that the sea level must not change at all; that carbon must remain distributed in the crust and atmosphere precisely as before.
But, more relevantly, we also see this belief at work on both sides of the fire [non-]debate! On the one hand, whatever faceless NIMBY/political force stands in the way of preventative burns says you're not allowed to change the forest by burning it: that would be destroying nature and thus it would be morally bad. But TFA justifies its position according to this tenet too! It says that in "prehistory" (I guess it means pre-1700 or so) so many acres burned, and therefore it is obviously right that so many acres burn again today.
The problem is that this belief, even when it reaches correct conclusions, is deeply anti-scientific and even anti-rational. There's no rational reason to connect morality and stasis. As long as this is a tool for making choices, it doesn't matter how often it's used for making good choices (preventative burns); all those who use it will still be just as culpable for the damage done on the side of bad choices (no burns).
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y agoWe have a solid idea about about the pre-European history of fire in the US west, including some information about native american practices during parts of that history (they burned, at least in some areas and for some of the time). We have hard evidence of what the last 100 years of forest management policy has done. Nobody is proposing "nature can never (be) change(d)". The point is that that we tried to do something different (fire suppression) and it manifestly did not and has not worked.
- svrb 6y agoI believe you misunderstood my comment (perhaps I worded it poorly): I intended that it be interpreted as a statement purely within the meta-discussion. I shared a concern about the arguments used to justify both sides of the debate, and did not intend to advance one side or the other. While you seem to believe I was arguing against preventative burns, the sibling comment seems to believe I was arguing for preventative burns which are (according to that comment) a crazy libertarian idea. This makes me wonder whether any critique of dogma must be reinterpreted as a disagreement about facts as a kind of memetic camouflage self-defense mechanism...
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y agoI don't believe you were arguing against preventative burns. You were clear arguing against the idea that things must remain the same. My point was the people who understand this stuff are not arguing that things must remain the same.
- gamblor956 6y agoSomewhere along the line CA's left/progressive ideology picked up a deeply ironic tenet that the world must remain absolutely unchanged by human habitation; You have it exactly backwards. The areas where the CA fires occur are overwhelmingly conservative. whatever faceless NIMBY/political force stands in the way of preventative burns says you're not allowed to change the forest by burning it Some of the areas that are currently burning, including Sonoma County, were burned just 2 years ago. That did literally nothing to stop the severity of the current fires. Libertarians act like prescribed fires are some sort of cure-all for mega-fires, and they're simply not. The problem is that the plant life is too dry because of a years-long drought. Megafires aren't nearly as mega in years when there's plenty of rain.