[Below is a letter to the editor submitted to multiple Colorado newspapers that was never published. In recent months, Colorado’s corporate media outlets have rejected close to 100 percent of letters to the editors and opinion pieces from a variety of local residents critiquing public lands extraction while publishing many pieces promoting it.
One increasingly anti-environmental outlet, Colorado Sun, rejected five out of five opinion pieces critiquing public lands logging over the last several months from: the state’s most-published scientist researching wildfire and forests; a forest management analyst with 40 years experience; a former federal government researcher; a recent CU grad and aspiring environmental attorney; a staffer for a grassroots organization (not ours).
Colorado Sun told one of them they wouldn’t publish his piece critiquing the Orwellian “Fix Our Forests” Act because it was a federal and not state bill—introduced by Colorado’s U.S. Senator Hickenlooper—and therefore not impacting Colorado (huh?). Weeks later, the same outlet ran an opinion piece on “Fix Our Forests” from a County Commissioner whose Parks and Open Space is carrying out the most aggressive public lands logging in the state.]
Wildfire Hysteria an Excuse for Corporate Profit and Government Graft?
What do electricity blackouts and logging across hundreds of thousands of acres of Colorado’s public lands have in common?
Both siphon ratepayer or tax dollars towards industry (energy and extraction) and government budgets. Both are, at best, challenged by sound science and common sense, or at worst, do more harm than good. Both are being forced on a deliberately misinformed public in the grips of wildfire hysteria. And, most important, both have far more effective alternatives that are last on the list if not left entirely off.
Obviously, wildfire is a risk to homes and infrastructure of those who choose to live in—and push further into—forests in the fire plain. Luckily, we have ways of reducing threats: Burying power lines can prevent fires or outages during weather events. And the scientific consensus is that home hardening and defensible space pruning up to 100 feet around buildings can protect structures from even high-intensity wildfire.
Instead of moving full speed ahead with these solutions, in Colorado they’re given little more than lip service or a drop in the bucket’s worth of funding compared to industry and government’s favorite schemes: shutting down the grid whenever a strong wind blows and unleashing ineffective (even counterproductive) Wildfire Pretense Logging across public lands.
Sadly, the blackouts many of us have been experiencing are not just from Xcel shutting off our power. They’re also from much of our media refusing to report facts or hold corporations and government accountable for their unscientific and dangerous wildfire hysteria.
Eco-Integrity Alliance 