While the state's lawyers are suiting up for a fight with the EPA, another team of legal pugilists is preparing for a slugfest with the U.S. Forest Service.

California filed suit last week against the federal agency, accusing Forest Service officials - and, by implication, the Bush administration - of ignoring federal law in their order to open more than a half-million acres of wilderness in California to road building and oil drilling.

The federal order targets four Southern California forests, including our own Los Padres National Forest. The Bush administration apparently sees these pristine lands as prime fodder for industrial development, and perhaps a way to ease the nation's energy crisis by facilitating an increase in domestic oil production.

So, not only does the Bush administration not want California setting tougher anti-pollution rules than the federal government, it would like to allow those cars and trucks into areas inhabited by 31 creatures and 29 plants on the endangered-species list.

This administration's piecemeal destruction of environmental protections would be comical - if such actions weren't so potentially tragic. It seems that no flora or fauna - including humans - are safe, as long as this president is in office.

California has the world's fifth or sixth largest economy. Maybe we could secede, go it alone for a while.

But probably not. That's already been tried.

Advertisement

March 4, 2008