It's official. The environmental movements most responsible for the inane roadless policy in Colorado that directly lead to the 1.5 million acre lodgepole pine die off; that will doubtless lead to a massive and probably deadly Colorado forest fire within the next two years; and who would like people who simply cannot think to believe that this is only nature at work have swarmed for Mark Udall, for Tom Udall, and for Jeanne Shaneen.
The groups that will join forces to elect Mark Udall are the Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund, League of Conservation Voters, Clean Water Action and Environment America.
In the event that people in the center and center right don't take this invasion seriously, a New Mexico blogger reports:
The groups gained national attention in 2006 when they combined resources to invest more than $1.7 million in the defeat of then-House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo, R-Calif. He was a 14-year incumbent whose defeat was seen as unlikely, as he represented a conservative district, but he ended up losing to Democrat Jerry McNerney by six points.
The rules are a bit different here in Colorado. While these groups can come in and try to destroy Bob Schaffer's chances, they are quite vulnerable to being hung on their own scaffold. If industries can be punished and regulated for emitting greenhouse gases as Bill Ritter seems intent to do, then environmentalist organizations and their contributors can be held responsible and liable for the carbon dioxide put out by fires and rotting timber. It is the same gas.
All of the industries in the state of Colorado combined do not emit as many tons of greenhouse gasses as 1.5 million acres of rotting timber. Indeed, Reuters is reporting that, our dead and dying forests will emit millions of tons of Carbon Dioxide:
The beetle, Dendroctonus ponderosae, changed that. Dead trees release carbon as they rot, and of course fail to use carbon dioxide as they would if alive.
"This impact converted the forest from a small net carbon sink to a large net carbon source both during and immediately after the outbreak," the researchers wrote.
"The predicted emissions are larger than the total average sink of all of Canada's managed forest over the last decade...""Here we estimate that the cumulative impact of the beetle outbreak in the affected region during 2000 to 2020 will be 270 megatonnes (of) carbon on average over 374,000 square km (144,000 sq mile) of forest," they wrote.
"According to the new calculations, by 2020 the beetle outbreak alone will have released 270 megatonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere."
If the labor unions can use the initiative process to try to destroy business in retaliation for putting right to work on the ballot, there is no reason that conservatives can't use the same mechanism against out of state holier-than-thou environmentalists who come to Colorado to interfere with our forest management and political process.
Perhaps Bill Ritter and Ken Salazar will see this and tell the five organizations that they aren't welcome here. "Holster your weapons," they could say. Don't hold your breath.
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