We are not suffering from a lack of knowledge and experience. Human beings have known how to manage forests for millennia. Native Americans did it. Pre-historic Britons did it. Fire was one of the tools in their kit to keep forests healthy.

What we are suffering from is a surplus of greed. It makes people stupid.

Timber companies fail to use the knowledge of their forestry staff to address issues with undergrowth. Government regulators allow clearcutting and mindless fire suppression for decades. These ingredients for disaster are mixed in a toxic stew of atmospheric warming driven by unbridled thirst for profits by fossil fuel companies. Hotter, dryer, and stronger winds literally fan the flames.

Even that is not the complete picture. The active, calculated denigration of scientific knowledgepioneered by the tobacco industrybecame standard operating procedures by the fossil fuel and other polluting industries. That has now seeped into the medical field, poisoning the trust between medical providers and their patients.

The fear is that more knowledge, even better articulated knowledge, is not the solution. We've known what to do for a long time. We just have refused to do it.

Our children and grandchildren will pay for our stupidity.
Javaman