Cost-Benefit Analysis of Not Clear Cutting Forests

No, this isn't a proposal for slap-dash clear cutting of forests.

One of the things that is so frustrating about watching Mark Udall and his environmentalist extremist allies in the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society is their refusal to do any kind of cost-benefit analysis on the things they propose.

We are reminded of this by a Walter E. Williams essay on Costs vs. Benefits that never mentions the word "environment" or "global warming." Instead, it tries to teach the basic concepts of cost benefit analysis:

If we look to benefits only, we'll do darn near anything because there's always a benefit. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that there were 43,443 highway fatalities in 2005. If we had a maximum speed law of 15 mph, the death toll wouldn't be nearly as high, probably not even as high as 500. You say, "Williams, that's a crazy idea!" You're right, but let's not call it crazy; it's more accurate to say: saving some 43,000 lives aren't worth the cost and inconvenience of a 15 mph speed limit.

Now, take Mark Udall's support of roadless wilderness.

What is the benefit? It is primarily aesthetic. If there are no roads, there can be no lumbering. If there is no lumbering, there can not be ugly areas of clear cutting. Yes, clear cutting is ugly but it can lead to healthier forests that are less likely to burn. Which is uglier, a 60,000 acre burned forest or a few 300 acre clear cuts? Which is uglier, a 600,000 acre fire that burned so hot that it fused the soil or a few roads that allow thinning and even clear cutting over a few thousand acres?

What is the cost of these aesthetic benefits? Higher lumber prices, lost jobs, and destroyed local economies that then have to be subsidized by either the Federal or state government. Who pays those costs? It is almost never the people who benefit. Higher lumber prices are a well disguised regressive tax on the poor whose housing costs are forced up to acommodate the more wealthy population's desire for aesthetics. Yes, the wealthy pay more taxes, but their costs never match the hardship their policies impose on others.

A secret cost, again never paid by those who benefit, or admitted by politicians like Mark Udall is the cost in lives expended fighting forest fires that could have been contained by well planned clear cut fire breaks.

Here in Colorado, the costs are enormous. We have 1.5 million acres of lodge pole pine forests that are infected with the pine bark beetle, with projections that by 2012 every mature lodge pole pine in the state will be dead. This is the direct cost of Mark Udall's no roads-no thinning policy, but he is not paying the cost. Instead, he is reaping huge donations from the west coast "environmentalists" who won't be coming to Colorado to look at their handiwork.

A Campaign Quote Raises Questions

Mark Udall was quoted in the Cherry Creek News:

Speaking about the coming campaign and the issues to define it, Udall said “the outlines are clear- Iraq, the economy, immigration.” Udall said that undocumented immigrants must “travel the path to citizenship— pay a fine (for being in the U.S. illegally), speak English, have committed no crimes.” “We must address... the health care system where families are one illness away from bankruptcy.”

Udall, a westerner, said that Colorado issues would play a key role in the Senate race: water, transportation and creating more transit options. He also emphasized that Colorado’s position for renewable energy and the jobs it could create was strong, given our resources and the presence of the National Renewable Energy lab in Golden.

Someday we must remember to ask if Mark Udall considers it acceptable for (as he says) an undocumented immigrant to gain his citizenship if he went through Bill Ritter's agricultural trespass plea bargain mill.

Note that Mark Udall is not all that interested in talking about his part in the bark beetle crisis, his refusal to allow either clear cutting of fire breaks to reduce the size of a probable forest fire or the harvesting of dying trees by lumber companies.

We wonder if Mark Udall will be willing to talk about his part in his staff's railroading of Caroline Bninski into a one year jail term.

Is Mark Udall proud to be associated with Daily Kos to the point that they were setting up his own personal blog on that site?

So many questions and so few answers. Oh, and our favorite, the Department of Peace?

A Profile in Courage, Not

The Denver Post humorously observed that Mark Udall and Ken Salazar can't seem to screw up the courage to tell the public who they will vote for as a Democrat super delegate.

Mark Udall operates on pure fear, but Ken Salazar has well thought reasons for not going public. After all, Barak lives in the same builing as Salazar does and Hillary was polite to Salazar's mother for a few minutes:

Colorado's soon-to-be-senior-senator makes this assessment of the candidates: He lived in the same Washington, D.C., building as Obama, with whom he works out. And he is grateful to Clinton for having chatted with his elderly mom at a reception.

"Picking between the two would be akin to choosing between family members," said [ Ken ]Salazar, who was willing to campaign for Joe Lieberman after the Connecticut senator defected from the Democratic Party.

As for Udall:

Udall also is loath to alienate voters as he vies to replace Republican Sen. Wayne Allard.

Udall has mustered the political courage to oppose bark beetles. Yet on the question of who should run the free world, he remains uncommitted.

But, is this true? Mark Udall has not had the courage to oppose the Sierra Club's and the Wilderness Society's do nothing, let 'em die, let Colorado burn attitude.

We do admit that Mark Udall did have the courage to co-sponsor a Department of Peace - that is until he decided to run for the Senate, when he lost even that level of courage and withdrew as a co-sponsor.

Susan Greene sums it up best:

But officials who try to be everything to everyone risk winding up as nothing to anyone. In politics, guts matter.

Allard Secures $12 Million - Where is Udall?

The Rocky Mountain News is reporting that Wayne Allard got $12 million from the Federal Government for our dying Colorado forests.

The money would be in addition to the $12 million in federal emergency funding announced Wednesday by U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard , R-Colo.

Allard said he had secured the money, which includes $8 million for the Forest Service and $4 million to reduce beetle-killed trees on state and private lands.

It makes us wonder why Mark Udall couldn't have tried to get these funds last summer. He announced a small scale bill but hasn't pushed it in deference to his Sierra Club allies and contributors.

And Still There Will Be No Roads

In an article that the Gazette did not put on the Internet it reported:

Every large, mature lodgepole pine forest in Colorado and Southern Wyoming will be dead within three to five years...

In an effort to dodge blame, Mark Udall and his wild eyed allies in the environmentalist movement have claimed that this is a natural event, happening every 150 years. The US Forest Service disagrees:

Rick Cables, the US Forest service's regional supervisor described the die-off as "a huge, unprecedented event with major social and economic implications.

Perhaps most at stake are the state's water supplies. A lack of soil cover and the potential for forest fires as the dying trees dry out could leave reservoirs and rivers clogged with sediment more likely to pour off the landscape.

It is time for Mark Udall and his Sierra Club allies to recognize that this disaster needs to be managed, and that it cannot be managed without a reasonable access to the trees. That means roads. They supposedly love wilderness but don't much care if it is green or brown.

Mark Udall, A Practiced Liar

It should make people outside Colorado angry when they read a statement like the one Mark Udall recently issued promoting his very limited bill to thin Colorado forests:

“As quickly as the beetle epidemic is spreading throughout Colorado, the needs related to forest health and fuel reduction in our national forests are vast and urgent. These funds are critically important for the health and safety of our forests and communities--and ultimately the west, as Colorado stands at the source of life giving rivers that can be impacted by our unbalanced forest condition," said Rep. Mark Udall.

That statement is very impressive until one realizes that Udall's bill does nothing to promote fuel reduction in "our national forests" except close in to mountain towns. In fact, he and the Sierra Club strongly oppose "promoting forest health and fuel reduction" in our national forests

Colorado, as Udall correctly states, is at the source of rivers that can be impacted by "our unbalanced forest condition." Neither Mark Udall nor his environmentalist extremists give a whit about those rivers or the 17 downriver states they irrigate. Instead of allowing the management of the forests in a way that would protect those rivers, Udall wants to make the forests into wilderness areas that cannot, by law, be managed.

Udall's bill does allow and fund very limited fuel reduction near Colorado ski towns and some very local watersheds. No roads are to be built. His goal is to get elected US Senator. Having ski areas burned out before the election wouldn't help. That is why he is so willing to give the Sierra club what it wants while publicly pretending his bill does something it doesn't do.

The Gazette vs "Extremist" Environmentalists

Mark Udall's environmental extremist allies must be unhappy that the Gazette editorial pages can't seem to stop using that word when describing him and them.

Today, they did it again:

But surrendering to the blight is a recipe for disaster. Unless we want to be living in a moonscape, and to see the state’s tourism economy tank when the browning and blackening of Colorado becomes even more obvious, we must ignore the public lands pacifists and demand that Ritter and other “leaders” mount a response, no matter how costly or controversial with green extremists.

Man’s meddling, combined with “natural” forces, created these conditions. But that there’s a “natural” component to what’s happening doesn’t absolve human beings from a responsibility to respond, in an attempt to save what forests we can.

Cancer, too, is “natural.” But few people argue that we shouldn’t fight it when a dire diagnosis is handed down. Most of us fight, even though the fight might prove futile. Yet when it comes to Colorado’s forests, some people are calling for surrender.

From where is this defeatist drumbeat coming?

From politicians such as [Mark Udall, Ken Salizar, John Salizar, and Bill ] Ritter, who hope they’ll escape blame for the ecological and economic devastation, and avoid the need to deal with it, if they convince the public that 1.) it’s all just natural and 2.) it’s impossible to prevent.

The Gazette is dead on, even though it didn't call out by name the Colorado politicians (except Ritter) who will be most responsible for the browning of Colorado. Those politicians can see the disaster they and the Sierra Club have created but just can't seem to keep themselves from adding to it with really dumb stuff like Mark Udall's Roadless amendment and Ken Salizar's holding up the confirmation of a BLM nominee.

Fifty Trees! Oh, the Irony!

Mark Udall and his allies in the environmentalist left may be directly responsible for the destruction by fire and beetle of fifty million trees (See post immediately below).

While Mark Udall is content to allow the forests to burn by the tens of square miles for lack of reasonable thinning and his opposition to forest roads, he fights hard to ensure our continued dependency on foreign energy.

What makes 350 acres on the Roan Plateau so much more valuable than the more than 100 square miles of old growth forest recently destroyed in and around Glacier National Park? What makes the 2000 acres needed to develop ANWR oil reservers so much more valuable than the forests and homes around Lake Tahoe or the forests Yellowstone Park?

Some politicians are simply too dense to see the dangerous disconnect in their own policies and rhetoric.

The Sustainable Energy Coalition recently presented Congressman Mark Udall with its Leadership Award. No one saw the irony in the form the award took:

Representative Udall received a certificate for fifty trees planted in his honor through American Forests, a nonprofit organization that works to protect, restore and enhance the natural capital of trees and forests.

The Costs of Roadless Wilderness

The Colorado Index is suggesting that Boulder Liberal Mark Udall is creating the potential for ever larger forest fires by closing the roads. The author observes that closing the roads makes it difficult or impossible to thin forests and notes that the Lake Tahoe residents who were burned out are complaining about the Sierra Club's interference in the thinning process.

Closing the roads also might cause the deaths of fire fighters and a huge infestation of beetles with the potential to kill hundreds of thousands of acres of forest.

The essays are here, here, here, and here.