Doug LaMalfa and the Horrid Logging Bill: HR 1526

Joni and I took a hike down our canyon. Technically, this is the canyon for the west branch of the middle fork of the Feather River. It is free flowing in this section, until it meets the monstrously huge Oroville Dam. This earthen Dam is the largest of its type in the US and the fifth largest Dam period. From Oroville, water is shipped south in a canal that eventually is pumped over the Tehachapi Mountains to the swimming pools and general excess that is the Los Angeles basin. Jerry Brown's dad built the dam; it is his biggest legacy and enabled Los Angeles to grow by a few million more people. Which is gross.

Here's a hint: if you don't build infrastructure like increased water capacity, it makes it so that a bioregion can limit its growth. The Napa Valley is probably the best example of managed non-growth. Here's where I become the dreamer: Imagine that we changed zoning ordinances so that growth becomes nearly impossible? We inflict our own "Limits to Growth" before the inherent excesses that will curtail growth arise, usually involving some catastrophe: flood, famine, earthquake.

Joni made her own splash this week in the Chico News and Review. Here's what they wrote about Joni:

One of the protesters who spoke to the small crowd, Joni Stellar of Concow, focused on the effects of climate change and other environmental impacts in forested areas, noting that District 1, which LaMalfa represents, is largely wilderness. She said a bill currently co-sponsored by LaMalfa, HR 1526 (the benignly titled “Restoring Healthy Forests for Healthy Communities Act”), “pretends to be looking out for the best interest of rural communities,” but actually encourages unregulated logging.

Noting that LaMalfa’s campaign included money from the timber and fossil-fuel industries, Stellar said, “Call me cynical, but I believe Doug LaMalfa is not just a simple climate-change denier—he’s a climate-change profiteer, making money for himself and his corporate masters while the rest of us just burn and breathe smoke.”

Read the story here.