I have been biting my tongue (or at least my typing fingers) the last two days, denying the uncontrollable urge to respond to reports that the California fires are caused by Global Warming. Several news outlets have made the assumption with liberal bloggers picking up on it and running so fast they actually found a way to blame the Bush administration. CBS News is now reporting the Santiago fires are the results of arsonists, not global warming.

CBS News has learned a task force of agencies, including the FBI, ATF, the Orange County Fire Authority and the California Department of Forestry will announce shortly that the massive Santiago Canyon Fire - which has caused an estimated $10 million in damage - is being officially declared an arson, and a $50,000 reward is being offered to find the arsonist.

Investigators have identified two separate “points of origin” where they believe the fire was set, CBS News has learned. FBI agents secured the scene to “maintain its integrity.”

I have resisted writing about the subject because I feel it is wrong to politicize an event that as of this moment has killed 6, injured 50, and destroyed over 1500 homes. It is one thing to look back and wonder what could have been done differently, in an effort to learn from our mistakes, but it is juvenile to point fingers while the fire still burns and lives are still at risk. Having said that I must admit that I am about to join the ranks of the juvenilles. I can only listen for so long to the left, including Senator Harry Reid, ranting about global warming being the cause of this fire without going out of my mind. The truth is, it is those on the left who are to blame for these events, at least in part (although it would not surprise me to find out the arsanists were liberal activists protesting one thing or another).

Michelle Malkin points us to an article printed several years ago reminding us that environmentalist will not allow the government to thin forests in an effort to reduce the potential of, or at least the damage caused by a forest fire.

The GAO examined 762 U.S. Forest Service (USFS) proposals to thin forests and prevent fires during the past two years. According to the study, slightly more than half the proposals were not subject to third-party appeal. Of those proposals subject to appeal, third parties challenged 59 percent.

Appeals were filed most often by anti-logging groups, including the Sierra Club, Alliance for Wild Rockies, and Forest Conservation Council. According to the GAO, 84 interest groups filed more than 400 appeals of Forest Service proposals. The appeals delayed efforts to treat 900,000 acres of forests and cost the federal government millions of dollars to address.

Forest Service officials estimate they spend nearly half their time, and $250 million each year, preparing for the appeals and procedural challenges launched by activists.

“The report demonstrates that the appeals needlessly delay federal efforts to prevent wildfires, and if the process is not streamlined, millions of acres will be lost this summer,” said Senate Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici (R-New Mexico).

Neal Boortz also touched on that subject this morning:

The truth is that these fires .. well, not the fires themselves, but the severity of the fires .. can be blamed on whacko environmentalists. Every time someone in California suggests thinning out the brush that fuels these fires you have some environmentalist screaming about kangaroo rats or field mice or some such nonsense. I can remember many years ago there was a community outside of Los Angeles that wanted to clear the brush that abutted their homes. The environmental moonbats said no .. they went to court and managed to prevent the creation of a fire break. One homeowner told the eco-radicals to take a hike, and created his firebreak anyway. While the tree huggers were fuming, along came the fire. Can you guess which was the only home in the neighborhood that didn’t burn down?

The fact remains wether the fires were cause by arsonists or ‘global warming’, they would not have spread as quickly or over as much land had environmentalists not prevented deforestation from occurring, even on a small scale. Even as I am typing this, there is a matter pending in federal court in Arizona of an environmentalist group suing the U.S. Forest Service for planning to thin trees and remove debris:

Plans to cut fire danger by thinning trees in an Arizona forest now being destroyed by the nation’s largest active wildfire were blocked for three years by a Tucson environmental group, a Tribune investigation has found.

The U.S. Forest Service approved a plan to thin trees and remove volatile debris in parts of the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest on the Mogollon Rim in September 1999, according to court records. The plan was halted after the Center for Biological Diversity appealed the decision, then sued in May 2000, claiming the Forest Service had not followed regulations.

The matter is still pending in federal court.

Environmentalists say they can’t be held responsible for the fires raging out of control in Arizona. But the lawsuit all but halted any kind of fire prevention work in the Apache-Sitgreaves forest, said Pat Jackson, regional appeals and litigation officer for the forest service in New Mexico. About 90 percent of the management area where forest thinning was blocked by the lawsuit has burned, he said.

“We’re litigating while the forest burns,” Jackson said Friday.

Federal officials say lawsuits and protests have virtually halted their efforts to thin overgrown forests throughout Arizona to reduce the risk of cataclysmic fires like the ones that have consumed more than 400,000 acres along the Mogollon Rim, and are still burning out of control.

Anyone questiong how they can help prevent these tragedies from happening in the future can start by ceasing to send donations to tree huggers who prevent the government from acting proactively.

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Congress, Global Warming, Politics