State Senate Republicans who want to protect lives and property from wildfires on public land are being compared to the Bundy-led armed occupation of the BLM office in Oregon and the historic Sagebrush Rebellion.
A little harsh, considering that in this case, we’re talking about elected officials going through the legislative process to make change. It’s not like they stormed the Capitol, and the bill in question is based on a real disaster that could have been avoided had the feds allowed local firefighters armed with water, not weapons, to fight the wildfire that swept through Waldo Canyon in 2012.
The bill sponsored by state Sen. Kent Lambert of Colorado Springs clarified that the state also has jurisdiction on federal land during emergency situations, and would avoid this:
“The federal government blocked our county sheriff in El Paso County from fighting this forest fire before it got out of hand,” Lambert said. “What’s the result? Three-hundred-fifty-six homes destroyed and two lives.”
“We could have stopped the Waldo Canyon fire the first day, and yet the U.S. Forest Service came in and said if you move stuff onto federal property, you will be arrested,” Lambert shouted.
While the article makes it appear that Republicans are being irrational, it looks to us like environmentalists are swatting at imaginary black helicopters by claiming the legislation is a backdoor effort by the state to take over public lands completely from federal government control.
Legislating emergency access is not the same as an armed take-over, and the heated rhetoric over the measure by the Greenies could use a dousing of flame retardant chemicals.
This instance just highlights the deeply rooted problem within the entire environmental movement — they scream that the sky is falling whenever a Republican dares to address a problem on public property, which the Greenies seem to think is their own private playground.