Thank You, Sierra Club and Other Enviro-Litigators
By Blake Monk
The Sierra Times
November 5, 2003

Thank you for showing up over the years and pushing city, county and state zoning, anti-sprawl and land use restrictions in California that prevented home owners there from conducting common-sense fire prevention, brush- and vegetation-clearing activities on their properties.

Your diligence in the name of nature and the resulting 800-plus square miles of catastrophic fires with multiple deaths has provided our community in Las Vegas, Nevada with a wonderful sunset on the evening of October 29th, 2003 . I want to thank each and every Sierra Club and other enviro-litigator organizations' staff and members (such as the Center for Biological Dirversity of Arizona and California, and Friends of Nevada Wilderness) for this lovely memory, as I'm sure thousands of other citizens of the Southwest would like to do.

I'm so glad your organizations are at the root of the reason for the smoke haze and asthma attacks over these recent years, a result of your lawsuits to shut down forest management for timber sales, while at the same time you filed a lawsuit to force businesses in the Imperial Valley to reduce soot levels in the air without proving that they are the cause of the problem. I'm sure the consumers in the area are going to love paying higher prices for goods and services as a result of your litigation.

I'm so glad we're coughing and experiencing burning eyes from the wildfire smoke coming from 300 miles away, while you are looking after our health by demanding that engine emissions be reduced. You must think it's OK for me to breathe wood and leaf smoke, since it is from a natural source. Don't engine emissions from the combustion of petroleum provide a natural source for smog as well?

I'm so glad we are all sharing California's discomfort from miles away. Our suffering goes to support the contention of your communal outlook, as described by Winston Churchill, "The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery."

New Forest Bill Signed By President Bush