"Roadless" Radicals Have Gone Around the Bend

Just how extreme are the environmentalists who rallied in Denver yesterday for a restoration of the Clinton era-"roadless rule," and who reject a Colorado-tailored alternative that made some sensible modifications to the original? They're this extreme"

The Denver Post (italics added):

"Groups at a rally in downtown Denver on Thursday called for strong protection of Colorado's roadless areas. Critics argue the state proposal would leave the areas the least protected nationwide, because it would allow temporary roads for wildfire prevention, expansion of existing coal-mining and some utility infrastructure.

Some ski-area terrain would be permanently removed from the inventory of roadless areas."

These people don't even want temporary roads built in order to prevent wildfires.

They want to permanently put millions of acres of public land -- our land -- off limits to pipelines, transmission lines, etc. -- the infrastructure a growing West will need in order to thrive.

They want to close roads running to existing, operating, perfectly-legal mining operations -- which is a roundabout way of shutting these operations down.

They won't even make accommodation for the future expansion of ski resorts -- major job generators and economic engines for the state, which have long been accepted as a legitimate use of national forests.

And they want to impose these ironclad prohibitions and access limits on 4.4 million acres of federal forest in Colorado -- federal forests that are dying from beetle blight and prone to catastrophic wildfire. These are forests that need active management, aggressive management, not more benign neglect. This argues for more public access, not less.

But the roadless radicals are so far around the bend, and so blinkered by their fervor for access restrictions, that they can't see the forest for the trees. They have no common sense. They suffer from a psychological condition I call "environmental retardation."