Midnight Oil

Subject: Re: [powderworks] Peter and bushfires
From: RM
Date: 16/02/2009, 9:34 am
To: powderworks@yahoogroups.com.au

Some commentary made a point of saying the the local National Parks had not been effectively back-burnt / fire-breaked (?) and it was implied that that was a contributor.  There has been a big push from inside Au NP mgmt over the last 20 years from green-leaning bureaucrats to employ 100% preservation (and 100% human elimination) techniques on our Parks.  A fraction of that (so I'm  led to believe) has been the phobic elimination of wise old aboriginal practices, such as off-season back-burning.
The wisdom of the ancient keepers will be remembered after Eden is ash.  So it is with our whole earth, because as a populace we are ultimately too stupid to control our collective and individual lusts for trivial temporal comforts. 
At a philosophical level one might say, "the earth is ours to make the best of", but we are currently not only harvesting our own crops, we are harvesting the "crops" that don't belong to us - things that belong to the eternal community - the root fish stocks, the clean air, the dense natural forests, the loamy earth, the pure water tables, the polar ice caps.  These things don't belong to a company's balance sheet or to a short-lived land owner, or even to a generation.  They belong as much to the persons of the past who guarded them jealously for us to have, and they belong as much to the persons of the future for whom we now can, to the best of our ability, either keep or deny their inheritance - the inheritance that was kept for us.
Or are we "ultimately too stupid to control our collective and individual lusts for trivial temporal comforts"?
A pot, calling the kettle black,
 RM

Kate Adams wrote:
I think you misunderstood - I fled a forest fire at age five in Oregon in 1971, one that burned within a block of where I lived at the time.  That area learned its lesson - firebreaks around communities, regular controlled burns to reduce fuel, etc.


From: dnkimom <kate@dnki.net>

This is not just a case of arsonists and
poor communication - this is a major scale catastrophe of
environmental management. Pete's going to have to answer for that,
despite Rudd attempting to portray it as "we did the best we could"
and "force of nature" and "arson terrorists". That forest was a
xxxxx powderworks!