Are We Ready to Learn the Lessons of Fire and Flood? Writers On the Range
High Country News › August 06, 2009
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Summary
No one would call [Larry Craig] a tree-hugger. Craig has built a career out of supporting dams and levee systems that have reshaped the West. He once suggested carving a road across the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness. When it comes to deciding whether to control nature or accept its power, Craig has nearly always picked control.
Fires in Yellowstone, a century apart, steered a similar transformation of our view of the world. Wildfire was burning on the hillside across from Mammoth Hot Springs in 1886, when the park's military superintendent issued his first order. He sent troopers to fight the fire, beginning the federal government's commitment to wildland firefighting.What few then recognized was that the Yellowstone fires of 1988 were the first in a series of giant fires, a signal of a larger climatic change that scientists were only beginning to understand. It was part of the global warming that a majority of the world's climate scientists now attribute to the increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from human fossil fuel burning.See the full content of this document
Extract
Are We Ready to Learn the Lessons of Fire and Flood? Writers On the Range
Idaho Republican Sen. Larry Craig caused a stir Oct. 14, when he suggested that the 9th Ward, home of many of New Orleans' poor, should be restored as a wetland.
No one would call Craig a tree-hugger. Craig has built ...See the full content of this document
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