{"id":14817,"date":"2012-07-26T14:56:19","date_gmt":"2012-07-26T18:56:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=14817"},"modified":"2012-07-26T14:56:20","modified_gmt":"2012-07-26T18:56:20","slug":"introducing-common-sense-into-environmentalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=14817","title":{"rendered":"Introducing Common Sense Into Environmentalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s Washington Free Beacon<\/a> posted a story with some background information on the recent fires in Colorado<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The article reports:<\/p>\n

Robert Zubrin, a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy<\/a> and President of the aerospace engineering research and development firm Pioneer Astronautics, blamed environmentalists for the spread of these fires.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThey facilitated the spread of fire by keeping people from logging, adding firebreaks, and using pesticides,\u201d he said.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Zubrin wrote a book on this subject, Merchants of Despair<\/em><\/a>: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism<\/em>, which he will present today at the American Enterprise Institute<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Zubrin recently wrote<\/a> that climate change does not explain these fires. \u201cThe culprits here \u2026 have not been humans, but Western Pine<\/a> Beetles,\u201d he wrote, which turned \u201cover 60 million acres of formerly evergreen pine forests<\/a> into dead red tinder, dry ammunition\u201d for fires.<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the things that would prevent this type of wildfire would be permitting logging in these forests to clean out the dead trees and underbrush.<\/p>\n

Mr. Zubrin further stated:<\/p>\n

\u201cLogging<\/a> as part of a program of rational forest management\u201d could decrease the risk of fire by \u201cthinning out mature trees that are the pine beetles<\/a>\u2019 major targets,\u201d and creating \u201cgaps between forests, to act as firebreaks and beetle-breaks,\u201d he said.<\/strong><\/p>\n

If \u201cyou turn that wood into furniture, it doesn\u2019t turn into CO2,\u201d Zubrin said. Green activists \u201cdon\u2019t care if a billion tons of wood turns into CO2,\u201d so long as people are not responsible.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Environmentalists, of course, dispute this claim, stating that the Western Pine Beetles are doing the job of thinning the forests. Just for the record, I would like to note that the beetles are not doing a very effective job.<\/p>\n

Anthony Moore<\/a>, Owner of the Independent Log Company, has stated:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do a firebreak on all jobs,\u201d he said. As part of his logging, Moore even clears out landing zones for helicopters and action zones for firefighters.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWe care for the forest just as much as the environmentalists,\u201d he said. \u201cI was born and raised on the mountains. They are my kids\u2019 future and the public likes to see them.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Patrick Donovan, receiver for Intermountain Resources, LLC, said of a beetle-killed tree: \u201cIt died, it stays in the forest\u2014it\u2019s fuel.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Conservatives do not support dirty air and dirty water–what we do support is introducing common sense to environmentalism.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Enhanced<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s Washington Free Beacon posted a story with some background information on the recent fires in Colorado. The article reports: Robert Zubrin, a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy and President of the aerospace engineering research and development … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[411,3580,3579,1614,2093,3583,3582,3581,3578],"class_list":["post-14817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-american-enterprise-institute","tag-anthony-moore","tag-beetle","tag-center-for-security-policy","tag-colorado","tag-colorado-forest-fires","tag-forest","tag-logging","tag-robert-zubrin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14817"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14821,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14817\/revisions\/14821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}