Comment by kQq9oHeAz6wLLS
21 hours ago
Regardless of your view on global warming, what's also vitally important is we don't do proper forest management anymore.
We used to thin the trees and clear the underbrush, which drastically reduces flammability and the ability for forest fires to rapidly spread.
But that's not seen as "environmentally friendly" these days.
Well, Denmark is I believe a country very big on being seen as "environmentally friendly" and they thin trees, generally to restore habitats and increase diversity of species. What gives?
The best way to prevent forest fires is to cut all the trees. No forest means no forest fire, right?
The problem (as always) is that it is complicated.
We are living in a mass extinction right now (orders of magnitudes faster than the one of the dinosaurs), mostly because of habitat loss. It has nothing to do with the climate (of course the climate is making it worse, but we screwed the biodiversity before that).
Is thinning the trees and clearing the underbrush good for the biodiversity? Probably not. Is it good to reduce flammability? Probably yes.
But I don't think it is fair to say that those who care about biodiversity are obviously wrong because preserving the biodiversity make forest more flammable. If you think like this, the solution is to go live in a bunker. Many people find that attractive (just look at how many dream about living in a bunker on mars), but I don't.
Don't put this on the environmentalists when the simple explanation isn't short term cost effective to do this. If you need to put some big blanket blame, then blame capitalism. If nothing else because it has so far stopped all effective measure to stop the climate crisis.
And in other areas, e.g. Canada, "cost prohibitive" is underselling the magnitude of the logistical task of doing anything to the overwhelming majority of boreal forests. There's just so much forest, and no way to access most of it, that it's effectively impossible to do any forest management or anything about most fires. (Most fires don't come near population centres, so nothing need be done about them.)
I wonder what happened to the sparse and/or nomadic populations that used to inhabit and manage such areas of forest across North America...
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> blame capitalism. If nothing else because it has so far stopped all effective measure to stop the climate crisis.
Growth-driven ecological harm isn’t unique to capitalism.
And? Capitalism is the current system, and the one that is actively thwarting efforts to mitigate the disaster. I don't see how the existence of other systems that would be equally bad or worse is relevant.
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