Having written nearly 2,000 opinion columns during my career, there is one particular subject that I have repeated over and over. It has to do with the dangers and implications of wildland fires. I characterize these observations by way of the subject line “fires, floods, and fools.” Fire, of course, leads to the watershed being denuded, which amps up the threat of flooding and mudslides in subsequent years.
Addressing this topic invariably serves to condemn politicians and environmentalists from eschewing the age-old wisdom that the only way to prevent catastrophe is to literally fight fire with fire, i.e. routinely employing prescribed burns to cut down on fuel as nothing else works! Instead, we do the exact opposite—we protect fuel. Relatedly, the only way to deal with the resultant flood damage is by way of creating dams, reservoirs, and debris basins, but that too is frowned on!
Our policies, stemming from every level of government, serve to prevent controlled burns via the designation of fuel (trees and chaparral) as environmentally sensitive habitat. This designation sets these areas off limits to controlled burns, development, grazing, and planting—all of which would in their own unique way serve to mitigate and buffer the effects of wildfires.
We also forbid the creation of significant fuel breaks, which can only be done by way of mechanized clearing using bulldozers. As a result, we allow fuel to build up for decades in forests and canyons, which surround and intersect our communities, risking the lives of firefighters along with the untold damage and grief of residents whose lives and properties hang in the balance. We literally are playing with fire instead of doing everything we can to avoid the same. This year, some 65 children almost lost their lives because of our dereliction. Will we ever learn?
Just what is our problem? I contend it all has to do with our worldview and subsequent values living in a post-Christian society. The worldview of the Bible gives man a divine mandate to subdue the earth. Integral to this worldview is the understanding that Mother Nature is not benign. Specifically, we have forsaken the belief that mankind has the moral high ground to use initiative and technology to mitigate the ravages of Mother Nature, in this case, in the form of fire and floods. Hence, throughout the ages, we built dams, conducted controlled burns, created roads which doubled as fire breaks, created shelters, erected walls, and anything else we could think of to protect life and property, but now these things are basically forbidden due to our new religion.
We now worship and serve the earth as if it is the divine. Our modern religion treats nature as something holy and benign, indicating that it is wrong to affect, interfere with, and impede the course of nature. As a result, instead of controlling the damage that nature portends, we foolishly suffer from catastrophes that could and should otherwise be abated.
