Opinion: Governments need to be proactive in preventing wildland fires
By Monday afternoon, 5,041 wildland fires had scorched 3.02 million hectares, half the area of Nova Scotia, and 902 were still burning.
Air tanker companies are logging twice the normal flying hours. Ground crews are taxed, and new recruits are arriving from New Zealand, New Brunswick, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Mexico and the U.S.
The intensity of this fire season should prompt a thoughtful, tangible response from provincial and federal governments. The issue is certainly in the wheelhouse of the fledgling Alberta government, and when the NDP MLAs get back to business in the fall, it's incumbent upon Premier Rachel Notley and her crew to take action on the environment, something they promised during the election campaign.
"We will take leadership on the issue of climate change and make sure Alberta is part of crafting solutions with stakeholders, other provinces and the federal government," the party's platform said.
Its first step was taken in late June, when it announced a phased-in doubling of the carbon levy by 2017 and more stringent emissions targets for large industrial emitters.
More initiatives to reduce greenhouse gases are needed and should be identified by the committee reviewing the province's climate change policy. That committee will consult with the public and industry before producing a proposal that the NDP can take to the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, Nov. 30 to Dec. 11 in Paris.
While it's true wildland fires are a necessary, natural element of the life cycle of a forest, the process has been adversely influenced by humans on at least three fronts: encroachment, global warming and fire suppression.
Humans cause climate change, and the warming of the planet's air has indeed sparked more and more intense fires this season. The staggering total of 3.02 million hectares burned is more than double the 10-, 15- and 20-year averages and triple the 25-year average. It could be a deviation, but researchers think otherwise; that incidence and intensity are trending upward.
Entire housing subdivisions are built on the fringes of forested land. Those homes and the people in them are susceptible to wildfire, a fact that provokes suppression efforts in areas that might otherwise be left aflame, to burn off stockpiles of forest fuels like needles, branches and small logs. Instead, the fuel supply mounts and so does the intensity of the next wildfire.
When settlements are threatened by wildfire, all levels of government place human life at the top of their priority lists, and rightly so.
Those governments must take a more proactive role in mitigating the underlying causes of wildland fires, managing the forests accordingly and do what they can to reverse an alarming trend.
This editorial originally appeared in the Edmonton Journal.
Source: http://www.leaderpost.com/technology/Opinion+Governments+need+proactive+preventing+wildland+fires/11215958/story.html
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