During the Vietnam War, an American officer offered one of the most infamous quotes of all time. Referring to the U.S. military’s decision to bomb into obliteration a town of 35,000 people, he said, “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.” This quote comes to mind when examining a bill sponsored by Utah Sen. John Curtis, ironically named “Fix Our Forests Act,” S.1462, (FOFA). It should be renamed “We Have to Destroy our Forests to Save Them Act” (WHDFSTA). The bill is forest malpractice, climate malpractice, and public health malpractice.
Sen. Curtis’s S. 1462 is a legislative enactment of Trump’s recent executive order to dramatically ramp up logging on federal lands, exempting 60% of national forest lands from meaningful environmental analysis and public participation under the pretense of a wildfire “emergency.”
Dr. Brian Moench is the president of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment. He is a former adjunct faculty member with University of Utah Honors College, teaching the public health consequences of environmental degradation. He practiced anesthesiology in Utah for over 40 years and is now retired. He is the author of two books on our degraded environment, “Death by Corporation, the Killing of Human Kind in the Age of Monster Corporations,” and “The Great Brain Robbery, Why Women Have Become Smarter Than Men, Science With an Attitude.”
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