The World Is In Your Hands

Forest fires struck Oregon hard in the last few summers due to lack of proper prevention efforts. In the summer of 2002, the Biscuit fire delivered the opportunity for new forest fire prevention plans as it caused tremendous damage to forests and communities. For Bush, this meant revealing his Healthy Forests bill, a misleading title as it is a bill to unhealthily thin the forests. Rather than creating healthy forests, Healthy Forests creates horizontal forests. Timber companies are allowed to log, including even fire resistant old growth, at the expense of the Forest Service. From 1992 to 1997, the Forest Service lost $2 billion on its commercial-timber-sale program. Healthy Forests allows for more cutting, more costs to the Forest Service. Essentially, it hurts the environment at the cost of taxpayer‘s money to the benefit of timber companies, and Bush is actively attacking the vitality of the environment.1

The Sierra Club created the Community Protection Plan just as Bush came forth with Healthy Forests in Portland, in fact just before. Unlike his plan which left communities bare, their plan provided funds to fireproof communities at risk from forest fire and could be completed in five years. Where the president’s plan rested on the hazy, unsure theory of forest thinning, the Sierra Club’s plan rests soundly on proven methods. In Colorado, homeowner Vern Vinson pruned low branches, rid the area around his house of pine needles and dried grasses, and circled his house with gravel. When the townspeople returned after a fire, his house was standing while the others were ashes and cinders. A controlled burn near Frank Johnson’s neighborhood protected his house when the same fire, the Heyman fire, traveled toward his house. Those two techniques are the ones the Sierra Club prescribes. Essentially, the plan aids the environment at low costs to the benefit of the communities and America in general, and the Sierra Club is actively protecting the virility of the environment.2

Two thirds of Americans –across the demographics– hold environmental progress to be crucial according to all the polls -not good but crucial. Such statistics would almost fool one into believing that no sane politician would oppose that large a majority. However, through cunning guises President Bush has succeeded at doing so, passing legislation under misleading names. “Clear Skies” allows more pollutants. The Endangered Species Act, the water standard, the Kyoto Protocol, and more have been weakened. Bush is actively destroying the environmental progress that has been made since the days of Theodore Roosevelt, and passively supporting the environment has not worked. To protect the environment against conscious, well-thought out attacks, we must actively fight against them, not just in our ideas but in our actions. Actions speak louder than words, and here words are mute unless backed by action. I implore all of you to be more than speakers. Be doers. Do not call out for prosperity, for protection, for progress and sit idly by as our president tears it away. Inaction allows our world to fall victim to ravaging crimes against it, and it is our responsibility not to fall prey to inaction. We must attempt to stop those attacking the environment, despite that those attacking the environment will attempt to stop us.3