EDITORIAL: Work now for cleaner skies this summer
Choose smoke over woke.
Please, America. These culture war fights get us nowhere. Nor are they doing members of Congress much good. Citizens’ approval rating for Congress is around 15%. If your bosses gave you a 15% approval rating, you’d be on a street corner holding a tin cup — if you could afford a cup.
Well, smoke is as good an issue as any for North Idahoans to rally around. And it just so happens that a healthy contingent of U.S. senators, including our own Jim Risch and Mike Crapo, are getting behind it as well.
Our senators are among a bipartisan group encouraging the Biden Administration to clear further bureaucratic hurdles in the war against wildfires and their lung-choking smoke. It’s an issue that seems to lose ground despite some legislative progress because climate change stays two steps ahead.
If you don’t believe that, talk to any resident of the upper Midwest and northeastern U.S. Last summer, millions there endured the same wildfire-induced contaminated air that we have long suffered in the Northwest.
The group of senators (listed below) has formally asked key federal departments to allow increased active forest management through prescribed burning.
“For decades, western states have faced smoke filled summers that harm vulnerable populations, degrade the enjoyment of the outdoors, and weaken the economic vitality of communities that support outdoor recreation industries,” the senators wrote. “Prescribed fire is a proven method to reduce risk of catastrophic wildfire and the associated smoke from the mega-fires confronting our communities today.
“Given the significant harms that wildfire smoke alone causes, the MOU [Memo Of Understanding] gives your agencies the opportunity to allow for prescribed fire, which is a vital tool to mitigating wildfire risk, while protecting public health. Prescribed fires cause a small amount of smoke at a predictable time and in a more controlled manner, which is far preferable to the large and unpredictable smoke of catastrophic wildfires.”
Bipartisan support is critical for the likes of the Environmental Protection Agency, Interior Department, Department of Agriculture and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to be spurred toward support.
The Press applauds Sens. Risch and Crapo for helping lead the way toward greater safety and cleaner air in future summers and autumns, and joins the chorus of voices demanding that their government addresses issues that will positively impact the health and welfare of all affected citizens.
Read the letter: https://shorturl.at/rGI68
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Other senators signing the letter to the Biden administration: Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.), Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), John Thune (R-S.D.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), and Jon Tester (D-Mont.)