Fire: burning things causes problems. So does not burning things

Vegetarian Times, March, 2005 by Alan Pell Crawford

Q: Surely the people who set fire policy understand this, right?

A: It has been a long-standing debate. Back in 1910, when what became known as the Great Fires swept across the West, the government adopted a policy of suppressing fire. The Great Fires were never to happen again. For about 50 years after that, fire was something to be fought. But, starting in the 1960s, when so much conventional wisdom was questioned, there was a shift. Certain policymakers came to understand that some fire was good, and that fires could even be started--"prescribed fires," they're called--to do vital cleanup work within our protected areas. However, not everyone agreed.

This has been an area of controversy ever since, leading to standoffs. Timber industry people say you can safeguard public lands by building roads on them and allowing "thinning," which can be a pretext for logging on protected public forests. Thinning is when you clear out some of the smaller trees, which burn just like dry shrubs.

Unfortunately, extreme environmentalists oppose all thinning, even when appropriate, because they equate it with logging. They also oppose fighting any fires. Because they believe fire is natural and that natural is good, they say, "Let it burn." So we're not making nearly as much progress as we should. And things are just getting worse.

Q: In what way?

A: We're inviting worse fires. And because we don't think clearly about these issues, we use resources irresponsibly.

Here's an example: Instead of controlled burning in wilderness areas, we could go in with chain saws and clear out the brush and chop up the smaller trees. But chain saws still don't work as effectively as fire does.

And chain saws also create a lot of "slash"--branches and twigs and debris--which is a fire hazard too. So you have to get trucks in there to haul off the slash. The trucks burn fossil fuel. So do chain saws. By not letting fire do its job, we're creating all kinds of environmental problems. We're trading one set of problems for another, and often for worse problems.

Think of it this way: Centuries ago, when we used fire in our daily lives--for burning our farmlands, for heating our homes--we used open fire. But as we found alternatives to open fire, we confined fire to combustion chambers. It's still there; we're still using it.

But instead of burning logs, we now burn fossil fuels--at great environmental cost. Global warming is mainly a consequence of burning fossil fuels in combustion chambers.

Q: But open burning carries environmental costs, too, right?

A: Burning imposes some costs, certainly. Burning brush releases greenhouse gases, though not to the degree that burning fossil fuels does. So, in many cases, open burning is still the most efficient and least environmentally damaging way to use fire, which, as we said, we can't really get away from. We need to recognize the reality that fire is ever-present and then make responsible, informed decisions about how and under what circumstances to use fire.