Neil Godbout's editorial last Tuesday stating global warming is responsible for the rapid spread of the pine beetle and the workers that died in the sawmill explosions are victims of global warming is a whitewash.
The pine beetle has been in BC for around a hundred years, in small patches traveling about 30 miles a year. Controlling it was done in the winter. It had to be cut, trucked and milled before spring breakup because bugs fly in the summer time.
The Liberals changed the forest policy. You remember the change that caused sawmills and pulp mills to close was gutting all the rules and giving control of our forests to the companies.
Then the beetle flared up in Tweedsmuir Provincial Park. Everybody panicked. The trees are rotting and they're a fire hazard.
So the government sold the dead trees so cheap that the mills could afford to truck it 500 miles to mill it and still make a profit and they did, legally all summer long.
One of the mills in Mackenzie left their log yard full of bug wood all summer.
Remember the tens of thousands of logging trucks of bug wood coming through Prince George on their way to Mackenzie and Chetwynd and the next year all your trees started to die.
I made a presentation to your City Council back then. Trying to tell them the trucks are responsible for rapid spread of the bug through your town. They disagreed, their experts said global warming caused it. That's why everybody had to pay to get their trees cut down.
I am not a scientist, but to answer the question of how the bugs spread through the province so fast is simple. Go for a drive, follow the path of the logging trucks, count the clear cuts and all the dead trees beside the highway and the reason will become very clear.
Back then, the scientists said in ten years the dead trees will turn to dust and be a fire hazard. Nobody listened. Ten years later, two sawmills blow up four workers are killed and we have to investigate why.
I guess global warming is the new catch all phrase to cover things we don't want to explain or be responsible for.
Rick Berry
Mackenzie
