Yup. I've seen pictures of what's left behind after logging in some of the fire-affected areas in Australia. Not only did they do exactly what you said they left mounds of flammable waste in stacks to "rot" (or burn, as it did).

I wonder if it becomes economic if you factor in insurance payouts for destroyed houses as well as carbon and other pollution from the fires. It feels like something could still be done.

I know Americans hate the whole idea of taxes being used for useful things and would generally rather die a horrible death. But California usually seems a bit more European in its government style.

Has anyone done the maths on some kind of giant lawnmower that bags up the forest floor to create a fire break? Seems like it could be at a minimum burnt for electricity or anaerobically decomposed to hydrogen and be carbon neutral as a bonus.

The world would be better if there were an honest, non-manipulable, consensus way of including externalities in cost calculations.

> I know Americans hate the whole idea of taxes being used for useful things and would generally rather die a horrible death.

Your information is wrong.

Oregon has a significant amount of private forest land in the southwest. I would be interested to see the amount of fires that are on private forest land vs public forest land as the private land it clear cut and then planted, grown, thinned and then clear cut again. I would guess that based on growing up in that state and it’s extreme environmental political undercurrent(Oregon has spawned a few eco-terror groups in its time) that most public land doesn’t get properly logged in Oregon.

Maybe you should look this stuff up and figure it out, as opposed to guessing that it's based on "extreme environmental political undercurrents". It's not like the location of the fires is a state secret. Effectively you're promulgating a conspiracy theory.

As I've stated elsewhere, it's well understood that commercially viable logging on public land (here in Australia at least) is not particularly effective for fire suppression (due to what's left over and what's left on the ground) and it wouldn't surprise me if it's true elsewhere. Maybe it's different in Oregon but there seems to be a surfeit of people "guessing" that it's somehow all the Greenies' fault.

A single google search[1] turned this up. As I hypothizied Oregon's forest, like most western states are majority owned by the Federal Government. Which makes them susceptible to the issues I brought up. As for eco-terrorists. This is from 2002[2] but it highlights that eco-terrorism in Oregon has been a long standing issue.

[1] https://catalog.extension.oregonstate.edu/em9228/html

[2] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-107hhrg77615/html/C...

So, the evidence you found is that "most of the forest in Oregon is owned by the Federal government" and "19 years ago someone had a hearing about ecoterrorism".

I'm particularly enjoying the fact that the mild-mannered folks at OSU (maybe they are part of the Ecoterrorism Conspiracy?) suggest bizarre ideas like "maybe having lots of people mucking about on public land increases the risks of discarded cigarettes and campfire accidents" and "perhaps having hot and dry conditions from climate change might lead to more fires" as opposed to your much more elegant explanation that all forest management in Oregon labors under some sort of Ecoterrorist Reign of Ecoterror.

My point never was that eco-terrorism is leading to more fires. It was that a state that can and has harbored extreme environmental organizations is more likely to have environmental groups sue the federal government to stop logging that the groups openly discuss as being distasteful and negative. I'm not claiming that eco-terror groups are going out and starting fires, but that a state that regularly spawns eco terror groups has a large environmental undercurrent in it's politics that lead to more organizations that will sue to prevent practices such as logging from happening.

I'm not going to spend hours researching proof for a topic that I've lived and experienced for more then 20 years of my life in that state. My lived experiences in Oregon are one of extreme environmentalism being a regular occurrence, including camping in trees to prevent logging, lighting privately held businesses on fire, justifying wolves killing farmers livestock, and actively working to take away access rights of public lands in the name of environmentalism. I'm not going to spend a day sourcing all of these claims as they are easily discoverable via simple google searches.

I don't doubt your word that fringe environmentalist groups are pretty well established in Oregon.

That said, the idea that these groups (or prevailing attitudes behind them) are preventing some form of logging that would actually help with wildfires (and yet is commercially viable) is something that you're more or less just making up from your hunches and anecdotes.

At least here in Australia they just pull mature trees out and leave scrub as well as highly flammable waste behind.

A lot of people need their asses kicked over this sort of issue: higher on the list are people who build right into the bush then yell bloody murder about controlled burns. CA definitely has a lot of these people, and there's probably a fake "greenie" undercurrent in the attitude (a sentimentalization of the bush). But the "greenies messed it all up" is a simplistic morality tale usually promulgated by people who know nothing about fire management and are looking to find something other than climate change to blame for our recent dire years.

<no real limits to logging

I am not sure what fantasy world you live in but it’s obviously not Oregon. The same type of groups that decimated the logging industry via the Spotted Owl are now going after dams via the fish. First they create this enormous fire hazard and now they want the water that fights it to wastefully run unimpeded into the ocean.