It would be swell to have one extreme weather hazard thread on HN that didn’t largely devolve into whinging about climate change, as if your snide comment ever

It would be swell to have one extreme weather hazard thread on HN that didn’t largely devolve into whinging about climate change, as if your snide comment ever made a difference. Speaking practically, our forestry policies are zombies from a knee-jerk era of “protect everything” in response to a previous industrial perspective of “cut it all down.” You’d be surprised - or sickened - how much forest coverage in the US is replanted. We’ve already made our mark on the environment, so why freeze our policies in place while the situation continues to evolve? One approach often left unmentioned every fire season is clearing brush and trees for biofuels. Trump caught a lot of flack a while ago for blaming California wildfires on a lack of raking the forest, but he wasn’t entirely wrong there either. Forests need to be maintained. The native Americans understood this and had all kinds of forestry techniques like controlled burns. So why not turn a cost center into a profit center? You can make quality pellets out of crap wood. I’ve seen it. Wood pellets are a fairly renewable resource too, since most of the growth necessary to sustain them happens in the very early parts of a tree’s lifecycle. That could gradually replace fuel oil and propane for rural areas (where nat gas pipes are uneconomical). And investing in forestry would be a good economic basis for long-neglected areas, such as New York State’s Southern Tier and North Country. But for the love of God, if you’re going to take the time to complain, DO SOMETHING.