Editor:
In her most recent editorial (“Severe California wildfires could have been avoided,” Nov. 1) Tiara Fuller claims that to best prevent future wildfires in Southern California and protect the environment, we should endorse policies that encourage logging and removal of undergrowth.
I couldn’t help but chuckle at the underlying absurd logic in her opinion editorial: if we strip-mine all the forests and dry underbrush that gets in our way, there will be nothing left for the fires to burn! Her confused thinking on environmental issues should surprise no one. She describes global warming — an established consensus among climatologists — as a “convenient myth.” (Even if global warming is a myth, I would see nothing convenient about believing such a myth!)
In point of fact, Fuller gets it all wrong. There are three important reasons why logging causes wildfires. First, it’s important to remember that logging companies don’t remove every square inch of foliage in the areas they pillage. They leave smaller trees and all of the non-commercial shrubbery and vegetation on the forest floor and only remove the massive (profitable) trees. What remains, now more greatly exposed to the sun, dries out further. This creates forests full of tinder. Second, “slash piles” that logging companies leave behind act as further fuel for these fires. Third, the enormous gaps in the forest overgrowth normally would act as a mitigating factor for powerful winds that fuel undergrowth fires. For forests to survive and be healthy, they need humans to simply leave them alone. They do not need our “managing” or interference one bit.
Controlled burns were never necessary before humans started to interfere with the ecosystem. Trees co-evolved with lightning. During storms, this lightning is the natural and necessary “controlled burn” that sparks small fires that would routinely and cyclically weed out the dry pockets in forests. I know Chronicle readers are growing accustomed to the hate-mongering in Fuller’s columns, but it’s time that she stops describing everyone who doesn’t adhere to the almighty Fox News dogma as a “treasonist” and “tree-hugger.” Maybe instead she could spend her time actually reading scientific literature.
Jeremy BeckhamJunior, Philosophy and History