Another Fire, Another Accusation

Yesterday I watched the growing plume from the High Park fire in Northern Colorado. Spotted early Saturday morning in an area with heavy damage from the Beetle Kill Epidemic sweeping through Colorado's Lodge-pole Pine forests, it had grown to 5,000 acres by nightfall, and early Sunday reports put it at over 8,000 acres.

“I blame Smokey the Bear,” remarked an observer. “If it weren't for the Forest Service's fire policies, this confluence of over-aged forests and beetle-kill fire-ripe tinder wouldn't be so prevalent.”

The Forest Service always gets the blame. If it isn't their approach to controlling and preventing wildfires, it's their lack of willingness to allow logging companies in to thin the forests. No one ever remarks that the sea of beetle-kill red spreading across Colorado's forests might just be a natural cycle of mother nature – part of the recurrent pattern of fire, new growth aspen-pine-juniper, aging lodge-pole, insect infestation, fire.

But there is an intriguing assumption underlying the accusations: That the activities of people can alter the processes of nature. That a small organization with its thousands of people can make decisions and affect actions to the point of changing the course of life. That the few millions of Colorado residents, along with the temporary visitors each year, through their actions avoiding starting fires are impacting and altering what would otherwise occur.

It's the underlying assumption that our stewardship of the earth matters. That what we do, the actions we take and the actions we refrain will push and pull the tides of growth and death across vast regions of the planet.

What happens if we scale up the scenario? If instead of the actions of 7 million people, we consider the combined influences of the actions of all 7 billion residents of the world? Does our passage go unremarked by Mother Nature: The resources we consume, the pollutants we produce, the alterations to the patterns of plant and animal populations not have an affect many times greater than the simple act of controlling wildfires in a few acres of high mountain forests?

Did the observer hit upon a truth, or miss the mark? Is blaming Smokey and the actions of the few disingenuous because it is simple arrogance to think that humankind and our collective actions bear upon planetary outcomes? Or did he simply mis-phrase it, and should instead of said “I blame us"?