Enviro-Radical Campaign to End Up Exposing Mark Udall's Harmful Policies?

The Rocky Mountain News has one of the most un-amazing "dog bites man" headlines of the year: "Five national environmental groups to target Schaffer."

No one is surprised that the out-of-state enviro-radicals like Sierra Club are throwing their political heft behind their champion Mark Udall. But what fewer people may know is that Mark Udall and the Sierra Club are working behind the scenes in Congress to kill a moderate bipartisan compromise plan that would allow clean drilling on the Roan Plateau. Killing the plan means thwarting jobs, economic growth, and higher education funding for Colorado.

In addition, some of the short-sighted policies Udall has championed for the enviro-radical lobby have exacerbated the damage to Colorado forests from fires and pine beetles.

A watcher observes:

The rules are a bit different here in Colorado. While these groups can come in and try to destroy Bob Schaffer's chances, they are quite vulnerable to being hung on their own scaffold. If industries can be punished and regulated for emitting greenhouse gases as Bill Ritter seems intent to do, then environmentalist organizations and their contributors can be held responsible and liable for the carbon dioxide put out by fires and rotting timber. It is the same gas.

A watcher points readers to a new Reuters article that highlights the massive carbon dioxide emissions from pine beetles and forest fires. Udall and the Sierra Club can't have it both ways.

Colorado needs a more moderate, balanced, reasonable approach than Mark Udall and the enviro-radical lobby have to offer.

Mark Udall's Policies Continue to Undermine Health of Colorado Forests

Writing at The Colorado Index, a watcher makes a keen point about the damaging effects of Boulder liberal Rep. Mark Udall's environmental policies to Colorado forests. It's worth a look.

Where is Udall's Thumb?

It seems that Bill Ritter may be trying to create policy that allows some road building in Colorado forests, something that Mark Udall reflexively opposes.

The Denver Post has an very informative and balanced article on the issue. The comments are equally informative.

Beauty in the eye of the beholder.

At least some of the fires near San Diego and Los Angeles appear to have been set. As this is being written, the burned area almost certainly exceeds a half million acres.

Barbra Boxer claims that the problem is global warming, presumably caused by man.

The left is stunningly silent on the contribution of these mega forest fires to the CO2 in the atmosphere. It also conveniently ignores its part in creating the conditions that cause these fires.

Let's assume that Boxer is correct. Wouldn't it be more sane to require the forest service to clear cut enough fire breaks that the fires would be limited in size to, say 10,000 acres?

Make no mistake, a 10,000 acre fire is still huge, more than 15 square miles.

Clear cuts aren't pretty, but they do grow back far more quickly than areas burned over by the hot fires we see today. If that regrowth were managed in a way that minimized the fire danger, it might even be possible to have both a heavily forested area and a safe forest at the same time.

Mark Udall's brand of environmentalism would consider this suggestion to be heresy. He seems to prefer the natural brown "beauty" of these mega burn moonscapes where nothing in nature survives to the "ugly" scars that clear cutting leaves, even if they protect the adjacent green forests and their inhabitants from mega fires. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.