There's clearly a good middle ground, but there's a lot of simplistic theorizing about this from folks with ideological axes to grind.
The reason is that the kind of logging that's economical is not good fire suppression. IE, clear cutting is going leave a thicken of young trees and undergrowth in ten year that's a huge fire hazard but not economical to log. The state would have to pay for sort of logging that could effectively cut fire and that's usually not not called but logging but ground clearing. And it's done a bit but not affordable around every little town in the Sierras.
As I've stated elsewhere, it's well understood that commercially viable logging on public land (here in Australia at least) is not particularly effective for fire suppression (due to what's left over and what's left on the ground) and it wouldn't surprise me if it's true elsewhere. Maybe it's different in Oregon but there seems to be a surfeit of people "guessing" that it's somehow all the Greenies' fault.
[1] https://catalog.extension.oregonstate.edu/em9228/html
[2] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-107hhrg77615/html/C...
I'm particularly enjoying the fact that the mild-mannered folks at OSU (maybe they are part of the Ecoterrorism Conspiracy?) suggest bizarre ideas like "maybe having lots of people mucking about on public land increases the risks of discarded cigarettes and campfire accidents" and "perhaps having hot and dry conditions from climate change might lead to more fires" as opposed to your much more elegant explanation that all forest management in Oregon labors under some sort of Ecoterrorist Reign of Ecoterror.
I'm not going to spend hours researching proof for a topic that I've lived and experienced for more then 20 years of my life in that state. My lived experiences in Oregon are one of extreme environmentalism being a regular occurrence, including camping in trees to prevent logging, lighting privately held businesses on fire, justifying wolves killing farmers livestock, and actively working to take away access rights of public lands in the name of environmentalism. I'm not going to spend a day sourcing all of these claims as they are easily discoverable via simple google searches.
That said, the idea that these groups (or prevailing attitudes behind them) are preventing some form of logging that would actually help with wildfires (and yet is commercially viable) is something that you're more or less just making up from your hunches and anecdotes.
At least here in Australia they just pull mature trees out and leave scrub as well as highly flammable waste behind.
A lot of people need their asses kicked over this sort of issue: higher on the list are people who build right into the bush then yell bloody murder about controlled burns. CA definitely has a lot of these people, and there's probably a fake "greenie" undercurrent in the attitude (a sentimentalization of the bush). But the "greenies messed it all up" is a simplistic morality tale usually promulgated by people who know nothing about fire management and are looking to find something other than climate change to blame for our recent dire years.
I know Americans hate the whole idea of taxes being used for useful things and would generally rather die a horrible death. But California usually seems a bit more European in its government style.
Has anyone done the maths on some kind of giant lawnmower that bags up the forest floor to create a fire break? Seems like it could be at a minimum burnt for electricity or anaerobically decomposed to hydrogen and be carbon neutral as a bonus.
Your information is wrong.
I am not sure what fantasy world you live in but it’s obviously not Oregon. The same type of groups that decimated the logging industry via the Spotted Owl are now going after dams via the fish. First they create this enormous fire hazard and now they want the water that fights it to wastefully run unimpeded into the ocean.
The easiest solution IMO is to stop trying to control every single fire and designate some zones as essentially wild and focus all efforts at protecting a smaller city area with a buffer zone between buildings and the nature reserve.
Problem is people want to live right in the middle of a forest but also do not want to face the reality that fires happen and that they are at risk.
The Dixie fire that is ongoing is 762 sq miles and is 25% contained. It is the largest fire started from a single source and second largest overall in California history.
If we let a fire just burn, will it just get so large that it can’t be contained and will just burn till there is nothing left? I read about natural fires that would span states and would burn till the rainy season. The fires currently burning in Siberia cover 4000 sq miles. The Bay Area is about 7000 sq miles. Alameda County is about the same size as the Dixie fire.
Managing fires is very complex and takes a lot of resources but importantly political will. There's groups that don't want to spend federal money on infrastructure even though the federal government is responsible for significant amounts of infrastructure.
Establish regulations to allow logging if a healthy forest is left behind, and the free market will fix everything else.
Free market capitalism is really good algorithm at approximating an optimal solution to the problem posed to it. Regulation is needed to define the problem.
Regulation is really poor at coming up with solutions to problems, and free market capitalism is really poor at defining problems.
I'd recommend a quick re-read of Adam Smith.
Building codes are an example of a bad regulations. They require e.g. a specific spacing of wooden beams, and specific materials used. That's regulation defining a solution. When people come up with better ways to achieve the same level of safety, it's banned.
In contrast, for example, a lot of codes around EMI and consumer electronics are good regulations. They require bounds on how much EMI is emitted, but leave the free market to solve the problem. That works well.
Fines and mandatory insurance are another example of good regulation, whereas bans are usually bad regulation. If there is an externality, a fine places a cost on it, and a free market can optimize to it. A ban distorts a free market. Mandatory insurance too allows us to price in the cost of externalities with market mechanisms.
In this case, if you allow logging where:
- Underbush has to be removed to within some level
- Trees ought to be left to a specific spacing
... and so on, things will work out okay.
If you require loggers to have insurance, such that if a fire breaks out where they logged within some time window, insurance covers the damage, very smart finance people will figure out which things are high ROI and which are low ROI, and things will work out even better.
> I'd recommend a quick re-read of Adam Smith.
The "free" is on the forces of supply-and-demand, not a lack of regulations altogether (which is laissez-faire / anarchist). Wikipedia continues -- although with a bit of a non-sequitur in between, to explain that:
"All of these fields emphasize the importance in currently existing market systems of rule-making institutions external to the simple forces of supply and demand which create space for those forces to operate to control productive output and distribution."
Note that regulation is _external_ to supply-and-demand. It shouldn't interfere with the core concepts:
- Economic equilibrium
- Low barriers to entry
- Competition
- Spontaneous order
- Supply and demand