The Green Fire

When someone asked me about the wildfires in Australia, I assumed that the environmental nuts had made the problem worse, just like they have in the American west. Sure enough, angry survivors are blaming stupid 'green' policies:

During question time at a packed community meeting in Arthurs Creek on Melbourne's northern fringe, Warwick Spooner — whose mother Marilyn and brother Damien perished along with their home in the Strathewen blaze — criticised the Nillumbik council for the limitations it placed on residents wanting the council's help or permission to clean up around their properties in preparation for the bushfire season. "We've lost two people in my family because you dickheads won't cut trees down," he said.

I learned about this in the 80s and yet, here in the 2000s, people still get death and destruction thanks to this lunacy. The environmentalists may think the extra flora they force people to keep around is pretty, but to the fire it's just fuel. We get more damage, environmental and otherwise, because the fire travels further and causes more damage than it otherwise would.

In an area prone to fires, people would clear away some of this stuff as part of a mind-bloggling simple concept called maintenance. Maintenance is something you do with things you own or have responsibility for; unfortunately, the environmentalists think we aren't part of nature and thus shouldn't interact with it, much less own it.