"Environmental Conflict Industry"

[Scout1071]

Senator Gordon Smith is on CSPAN2 at this very moment making a case for allowing Bush's big timber friends to continue to bulldoze our national forests and he keeps calling the people trying to protect our forests the "Environmental Conflict Industry."

That is disgusting. They are such slimy bastards for manipulating our language and creating these inflammatory terms.

[Scout1071]

1. Basically, there case is that if they don't allow their friends in big,

private lumber industry tear down our national forests, they will just burn anyway. I agree that we have to manage our forests, but why the &^%$! should they be allowed to profit from public lands to turn around and sell at high prices back to the public at Home Depot and others? It's total bullshit. If they have to saw them down, then let the public have it's resources.

[etherealtruth]

2. The idea is that when forests are allowed to...

... burn (allowing fires to run their natural course) the old growth is generally not (wholly) consumed, the brush and detritus burn off. Obviously, the lumber companies are after the older growth which in the end doesn't diminish the fire destruction and often increases it---- which makes no sense unless you can get behind the fact that if you don't have any forests you can't have any forest fires