hello, again, everyone, i'm tony harris. the u.s. has joined the international community demanding answer for the alleged chemical attacks in syria. hundreds are dead including women and children. the syrian government denies using toxic weapons. an apology from robert bales in court said, quote . . . hosni mubarak has been released from prison. this is the moment the helicopter carrying left cairo.

mubarak will be held under house arrest. big time frustration on wall street today, a technical computer glitch halted traini -- trading for more than three hours. tepco, which runs fukushima, says it needs outside assistance to deal with leak of radioactive water. those are the headlines, more news next hour on al jazeera. millions of acres burned and more than a billion dollars spent as the u.s. government runs out of money to fight wildfires, we look at the challenge of balancing economic and environmental priorities.

you are watching "inside story" from washington. ♪ welcome, i'll libby case us, right now 50 uncontained wildfires are raging across the country, and the government is about to deplete its annual firefighting budget before the season ends. the us forrest service warns this is the new normal in firefighting. so are there more effective twice fight fires and limit the danger? ♪ >> joining us to discuss the current state of wildfires and the rising costs of fighting them, is a specialist in

wildlife education and changing climate, and senior fellow at the national center for policy analysis. but first the facts, the think tank head water economics has looked at how much money the federal government puts at managing wildfires. the biggest chunk goes to preparedness, $964 million, but putting out the fires is at $962 million. more than half a billion dollars goes to emergency funds, and another half a billion issing spent to reduce hazardous fuels. back in 1990, the average cost of wild fires was less than a billion dollars, now the price tag has tripled, and that doesn't include the money spent by states and local agencies.

doug, why has the cost increased so much? >> it is increased for a number of reasons, but the single most important reason, i believe, climate change. climate change has made the fire season longer and hotter, and it's made it -- and it has also made it dryer. all of these contribute to exacerbating the fires in the first place. >> sterling your thoughts on why the increase in cost? >> well, i agree it's multiple reasons. first off you are having larger and larger fires. since 1998, the increase in -- the number of fires hasn't gone up that much, but the size has increased exponentially. it was over 9 million in 2007, i don't think that that can be attribute to climate change i think it's attributed to bad management where you have

suppressed fires. fires are entirely natural occurrence, but the size and scope is largely due to man's intervention. >> give us a portrait of this year's fire season, sterling burnett. this is considered a fairly avenue in terms of annual burn rate. tell us more. >> well, this year's fire season isn't over. 3 million acres is still much more than it was ten years ago. so it is not average, but well below what we have seen recently. the cost has spiraled because the size of the fires has gone up, and because you talk about how much is appropriate every year, well, they also plan for a certain amount of fires, but then they throw in emergency funds every year, i don't think the spending issue will be an issue. >> i want to stay with this,

doug, the fire season this year -- the federal government is about to run out of money for it in terms of what they have allocated, what does that say about the federal government's allocation of resources? >> the federal government is spending about 50% of its entire forrest service budget on managing fire. that's a huge economic drain on the forrest service and our tax payers. i believe that the major factor here again is climate change. it's a lot harder to fight a fire when it's 100 degrees fahrenheit and the winds are stirred up because of the excessive weather. we need to recognize this is a factor and we have to address the underlying factor. >> the automatic budget cuts known as sequester ration that kicked in this year, has had an impact says the bureau of land

management. how so? >> well, it makes money unavailable by having the sequestration, so the forest service is cutting down other activities to use the money to fight fires. >> do we spend money on this sterling? >> what i know is we spend it badly. i agree with doug, that in fact we shouldn't be fighting fires after the fact, our disagreement is how to spend it before the fact. you need oxygen, fuel, a spark, and the right environmental conditions. every year we have forest fires, this isn't new, and i don't think it's due to climate change. we're not treating the forrest before the forest fire.

we have cut down on logging and pretreatment, so we have to spend money on the back end rather than on the front end. >> temperatures are higher than ever. to say that the temperatures aren't increasing is just plain wrong. we need to start with the science, and the science says that we have increasing temperatures and it's tributing more to the fires. >> gentlemen we'll dig into this more, but let's look at this summer, and paint us a picture of what the cost has been both in terms of dollars and homes, but also human lives. >> it certainly a terrible to see human lives being lost. in california we have had about one third of the normal precipitation this year. that is associated with climate change. and so california has been having a record number of forest

fires, and if other states in the previous year, last year was much, much worst. >> and last year was one of the biggest firefighting seasons on record. sterling where you have seen the most damage? >> california is a big fire season every year. colorado the last couple of years has been particularly bad, but any of the western states are tinderboxes right now. you have 190 million acres at risk of wildfire. 40% of those are u.s. forest service. right now, colorado has been bu burning, we have lost lives, buildings, businesses -- people get double hit when their job and house go up in flames. it is at catastrophic. i agree with doug.

once again we are going to disagree over whether climate change is the reason. >> when we come back, a warning from nasa, why the u.s. is likely to see larger and more destructive wildfires. more on that after the break. ♪ mission. >> there's more to america, more stories, more voices, more points of view. now there's are news channel with more of what americans want to know. >> i'm ali velshi and this is "real money."

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>> they risk never returning to the united states. >> we spent time with some members of the gangster disciples. with an autographed jersey, and obama shared a few praise. >> coach shula retired with more wins than any coach in history. each time that record has been challenged, team after team has fallin short. >> michael eaves joins us to talk more about that. the president was having a lot welcome back to "inside

story." nasa scientists say the destructive power of these fires is here to stay and will likely get worse. earlier i spoke with nasa scientist douglas morton and asked him about how this current season fits in nasa's projections. >> we can go back in time and look at the occurrence of fires in the u.s. or across the world, and it allows an time analysis. we see an increase in the u.s. in total wildfire over the last 30 years. overall we're trending towards more wildfires and more burned area across the u.s. >> what does that mean for firefighting efforts and how to deal with it? >> certainly the earlier start we have seen this year to wildfire fighting in southern california and other parts of the southwest, makes for a much

longer and more difficult fire season. obviously this has been a very damaging year for wildfires. very hot and dry conditions, and it makes it very difficult for firefighters and obviously for those communities. >> makes it more difficult for those communities, elaborate on what this means for americans in the future. >> certainly we're living in warmer world, so as we make our decisions about where to live and how to con instruct our communities, it's certainly important that we continue to prepare for the likelihood that fires in regions like the mountains that we're going to see an increase in those fires in coming years. >> as the federal government looks at hot it battles blazes, how do these models and forecasts come into their vision of where they put their

resources and think differently from fires even starting? >> one of the unique things question do with the different nasa satellites is we can look at the active burning fires and the smoke they generate and look at how dry the ground is becoming. some of my research in places like the amazon is specific trying to target that. can we know three or six months ahead of time that that will be a big fire fighting season and preparing those regions with greatest risk is one of the new and important ways we're using nasa satellite to help guide some of the resource management. >> to continue that discussion, we still have with us doug inkly, and sterling burnett. mr. burnett how do we use the tools that douglas morton just

talked about in future prevent. >> well, one of the elements for fire is fuel. and what we can do -- part of the reason we have these wildfires is a huge fuel build up. why is that? because the smokey the bear campaign was successful. and when that happened we had a huge fuel build-up. a lot of those trees are dead and dying. we need to clear the brush. we need to remove dead and dying timber, and replace it with growing, young timber. we need to increase logging, which has dropped over 80% on our national forests. and we need to open up some of the roads that we previously closed so firefighters can get in and fight these fires more

easily. >> sterling burnett the forest service says it did start doing more of a let it burn way of coping with fires about 20 years ago -- >> sure. that's right. >> still you say there needs to be more. >> i think the burn baby burn policy they did was disastrous. you have got four choices when you are managing wildfires, you can do mechanical thinning and logging. you can be controlled burns, but sometimes those get out of control as it did in the los alamos fire. and you can recommend selling off part of the lands, including to private individuals, to states, to public companies, and even environmental groups, because i think they would do a better job managing many of these lands. or you have your burn baby burn

policy. >> doug inkly. >> our national forrests were established by theodore roosevelt. and it said our forests should be used for multiple use, and sustainable use. they are not just for logging. they provide recreation, logging, grazing lands, fish habitat, and wildlife habitat. we cannot use them as a single-use land. we should not be selling these off to the -- to the private land owners. this is a resource that provides clean air, clean water, and lumber for our homes. >> what about the let it burn policy? >> i think that would be wrong to characterize it as something that the is the only way that the farrest service has managed

it. smokey bear had some issues, but the forest service realizes there needs to be other factors. logging is not the solution to all of the problems. >> we'll get more into this in just a moment. how to manage america's lands to prevent and fight wildfires. after the break we'll look at the options. we'll be right back. ç]

♪ welcome back to "inside story." fire seasons are getting more severe, and americans are

building their homes in forests and wild lands in increasing numbers, raising the risks. still with us to continue the conversation is doug inkly, and in dallas, sterling burnett, senior fellow at the national center for policy analysis. materialing i want to pick up on something you mentioned about who controls america's forests, and wild lands. when is enough development enough to cure a real problem with wildfires. >> well, this is america. this country was founded on the idea of private property. the government owns over one-third of the land in the u.s., so when people build on their private property, i don't think it's the government's job to say you can't do that. but they should be warned that they are at risk of wildfires.

can the forest around them be managed better, both for as doug said, recreation, we lose money on that every year, for fire fighting, wildlife habitat, so we need to do a better job of that, and that might reduce some of the damage done to people's homes and businesses. >> so if you build your house on the doorstep of a forest, should you have to pay for the damage if your house burns down? who should foot the bill? >> you better be insured. you should be insured for the damage to your property, but you should also probably take precautions to make sure the timber around your home is far enough set back that you are doing what you can to -- on your end to prevent fire from coming. >> is that your responsibility or should the government tell

you how much clear-cutting you should do? how much safe space you should create around your property or house. >> i don't think that's the government's job. >> all right. let's go to doug inkly to get a response? >> the forest service is already working with towns and communities so they can minimize the fire risks. so they are trying to make it safer. that's important because those national forests need to be protected for the citizens of the united states, and the many products that they provide. people have to understand when you build near a forest you are taking increased risk. if you build along the atlanta coast, you can taking an increased risk because of the environmental conditions. shouldn't you bare some of the cost of that? this is a diverse environment

and everybody needs to take responsibility. >> how different does america look right now in terms of where they are building their homes? >> the nice thing about the forest service lands is they do not allow development within those lands. so it provides areas where fires can burn naturally, where people will not be in harm's way, because they have been sold off to private companies. >> and sterling burnett, earlier you talked about these public lands and who should manage them. how much manage should be done? and when is enough enough? >> well, if -- as long as the public owns the forest it ought to be managed for the benefit of the public. and that includes wildlife habitat. but it should be manage to

reduce wildfires for pollution. it should be managed to increase water and stream flows. it should be managed to help wildlife to flourish, and that's not how it is being managed today with the hands off approach. in some forests in the western united states there is more dead and dying timber than living timber. >> how does that match your vision? how is it being done, and then what you would have it look like ideally? >> we have to separate what is happening today from what is happening in the long term. we need to fire -- fight the fires that are dangerous. climate change is fuelling our forest fires, and making them more destructive. so we need to address the issue of climate change by reducing

our carbon emissions, and then deal with this issue right up front, what is happening this year to protect people. >> sterling is painting a picture of hands off management. give us a vision of how you think it is being done? >> the forest service management is far from hands off. they are actively managing most of the forest service lands for production of these outputs. the national park service lands are closer to hands off. the united states forest lands are meant to produce good pod -- products for everybody. it is being put at risk by climate change. >> sterling burnett, response? >> well these are being put off limits as wilderness areas, and

wilderness areas are strictly hands off.

[ technical difficulties ] >> but i would say, even if they remain in public holdings, they should be managed more actively. and that means congress getting involved and saying when the forest service determines a plan, it can't be stopped -- >> all right. doug brief response? >> congress has already mandated that the forest service shall secure public input in the development of each and every plan. >> thank you, gentlemen. that's it for now from the team in washington, d.c., and for me libby casey. thanks for watching. ♪

every year in south africa thousands of teen-aged boys in the xhosa tribe undergo ritual circumcision which according to ancient custom, will make them men. but there are growing concerns that too many of these ceremonies are ending in tragic mutilation and death. "people and power" asked a south african filmmaker, who has himself been through the ritual, to investigate.