Smokey Bear meets al-Qaida, eco-terrorists

I wonder how many Southern California homeowners sent $25 last month to one of the “environmental” organizations that just burned them out of their homes?

Southern California fires – outgoing Gov. Gray Davis has called them the worst disaster in the state’s history – are the direct result of the efforts of America’s environmental organizations. As this column is written, there have been 16 deaths and 1,600 homes destroyed, and the fires are still raging.

You and I will be expected to “shut up and pay the bill” for this flaming display of environmental ignorance and arrogance in action. In the past, we have done this in at least three ways:

• Lost state revenue and higher taxes. The money that could have been generated by logging the dead and diseased trees, which should have gone to schools (Washington and Oregon mandate this), instead came out of our pockets. In addition, even more taxes have to be levied against our homes, incomes and consumer goods to pay for firefighting and endless environmental lawsuits against the Forest Service.

• Community devastation. In small communities of from one-to-several thousand people, the loss of 500 jobs at a mill can be devastating. Unemployment goes sky-high, young people leave, alcohol, drug abuse and domestic violence soar, merchants close their stores, schools cut teachers and government cuts social services. An attitude of failure overtakes the community and it begins to die.

• Higher insurance premiums. When insurance companies pay out millions or billions of dollars in fire losses, guess who pays? You and me, when the premium comes due.

Over a year ago, President Bush came to Oregon after a summer of devastating forest fires. He asked Congress to stop the environmental devastation wrought by out-of-control environmental groups, bureaucratic paralysis and judicial intervention in the forest-management process.

“If you are concerned about the endangered species, then you need to be concerned about catastrophic fire,” he said. “The worst thing that can happen to old stands of timber is these fires.”

Environmentalists labeled the plan dead on arrival. The Cascadia Wildlands Projects in Eugene, Ore., issued this statement: “You don’t have to look hard to see what the Healthy Forest Initiative looks like on the ground: It looks like giant stumps.” I wonder if Mr. James Johnston, who heads Cascadia, has traveled to California and asked any of the families who lost loved ones trying to flee their homes if “giant stumps” might have been preferable to standing torches, passing the flame from dead tree to dead tree?

Environmental groups say they don’t file many challenges to Forest Service initiatives to thin dead and diseased trees. They lie.

“A four-month (Arizona) Tribune examination of court records and Forest Service documents reveals that in the past decade almost every major forest-thinning project in Arizona has been blocked by a near-constant chain of lawsuits brought by environmental groups. When successful, the lawsuits have halted any action on forest-thinning projects that would reduce fire danger” (Lawsuits stall thinning, by Mark Flatten, May 27). The Forest Service estimates it spends $100 million annually just on defensive paperwork because of these lawsuits.

But environmentalists aren’t always content with creating the conditions for massive wildfires. Some are now setting the blazes themselves. The AP reported on Oct. 1: “The Earth Liberation Front, a movement that originated in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, has claimed responsibility for a string of arsons in the suburbs of Los Angeles, Detroit, San Diego and Philadelphia in the past 12 months. No one has been charged in any of the attacks. … On Aug. 1, a fire destroyed a five-story, 206-unit apartment complex under construction in San Diego’s University City neighborhood. The damage estimate of $50 million made it the single largest act of property destruction ever committed by one of these groups in the history of the country.”

Such eco-terrorism isn’t entirely home grown. As reported in WorldNetDaily, an al-Qaida detainee revealed his plan to start a series of devastating wildfires in the West. Police in France, Italy and Israel report they have already experienced such terrorist fires. Why should we be exempt?

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of shutting my mouth and opening my wallet every time an “environmentalist” climbs on his soapbox to explain why its “wrong” to cut down dead trees, thin the forest and remove underbrush. I’m tired of enriching lawyers on both sides of the debate, while communities, families and schools go begging. I think it’s an outrage that the environmentalists’ policies have resulted in the most destructive wildfires in our nation’s history. And I think it’s time to end their reign of eco-terror.

The tobacco lawsuits demonstrated that when an organization lies to the public and causes harm, it can be held liable for that harm. Thousands of people have been burned out of their homes in California and other western states. Tens of thousands have had their livelihoods destroyed, their families ruined, lost their homes, savings and retirements for no good reason – other than the glorification of environmental ignorance.

It’s time to end it, and I don’t mean the Healthy Forests Initiative (although that’s a welcome start). It’s time to follow the money and pass the collection plate: Environmental groups are receiving tax-deductible contributions to advocate for and against legislation, to conduct their junk science to the detriment of public lands, and to enrich their lawyers with our tax dollars. It’s time to go after their assets and their contributors. That’s the only way the madness will stop.

I hope insurance companies will file lawsuits against the major environmental organizations to recover the billions of dollars they are going to pay out in damage claims. I hope communities that have had their employment base devastated and their schools ruined by environmental junk science are going to sue for economic damages. I hope recreational interests that have been driven from public lands through policies set by junk science will file lawsuits against environmental organizations and their deep-pocket contributors. I hope the IRS will begin collecting taxes from donors to organizations fraudulently representing themselves as public charities, while they pursue their activist agendas. I hope that some good may yet rise from the ashes of California’s devastating trauma.