I thought only you can prevent wildfires
Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible
21–30 of 241 posts
Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible
#22[flagged]
Huh? Its a clean air regulation not an environmentalist one. Seems like a poor take.
Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible
#23One of the big problems is that controlled burns can and do become uncontrolled burns. The largest ever wildfire in New Mexico was started as a planned burn (more honest label) just last year. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/05/2...
Of course, this is discussed in the article.
Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible
#24They also destroy invasive species: plants, animals, bugs. Native species evolved long ago to deal with fire.
Research has also shown its net carbon negative.
Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible
#25One of the big problems is that controlled burns can and do become uncontrolled burns. The largest ever wildfire in New Mexico was started as a planned burn (more honest label) just last year. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/05/2...
All of the Rangers and CalFire people I know never call them "controlled burns". Rather they call then "prescribed burns"... for exactly this reason.
Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible
#26> Regulations make them nearly impossible
That is equivalent to saying sulphuric acid kills cancer.
While true, it does other things too like kill normal cells.
Likewise, broadly scoped regulation can hamper freedom and prevent people from doing otherwise harmless activities. Worse, it paves the way for selective enforcement. Think about federally mandated drugs regulation and how that is abused by biased authorities.
Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible
#27I like controlled burns as an analogy, too.
The US economy needed more controlled burns and small "fires" - eg restricting spending back a long time ago when that could've been done without major consequences, unlike now.
Similarly, as a parent, allowing your child to experience small failures so that they are less at risk of big failures.
Small failures that don't cause ruin = increased strength. Reminds me of the antifragility concepts.
Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible
#28This illustrates a more generic problem with our legal system. When the option for positive action to mitigate a problem exists, we often don't do it because the action creates legal liability for any and all negative externalities of the action, even if the negative externalities as a whole are drastically less than what would happen doing nothing. We resist permitting prescribed burns because when they cause uninte…
And this just generalizes to the recurring problem of individualism vs collectivism. Government regulation is the answer, but it's not being applied efficiently here
> Government regulation is the answer, but it's not being applied efficiently here
Do you have any examples of Government Regulations that are applied efficiently and do not cause harm to any individuals?
Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible
#29This illustrates a more generic problem with our legal system. When the option for positive action to mitigate a problem exists, we often don't do it because the action creates legal liability for any and all negative externalities of the action, even if the negative externalities as a whole are drastically less than what would happen doing nothing. We resist permitting prescribed burns because when they cause uninte…
Another example is how many people advocated for (and how many countries essentially adopted) letting covid spread throughout the population (either like wildfire or via "flatten the curve") to get natural herd immunity because letting a poorly understood (but known to be quite deadly) virus spread through the population was doable but giving out vaccines that hadn't been through phase 2 trials wasn't.
Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible
#30Goats emit less co2 than “controlled burns”, and mixed species mature forests don’t have the undergrowth problem commercial cutting cycles entail
First eagles, now goats as a device to get out of an awkward plot dead-end.