If you've been following my column in recent days, you know that I am not pleased with the House Energy and Commerce Committee decision to exclude federal lands from renewable energy legislation now winding its way through the Congress.

I can now report that federal lands have been included in the definition.

But so-called "old growth" and "mature" forests are still off limits.

What a joke.

Pardon me, but I thought the Congress was trying to protect our old forests. How on earth can we ever hope to protect them from the risk of killing wildfire and disease if we don't clear out the deadwood that is choking them to death?

Does anyone in Congress get it? Has anyone there ever actually walked through one of these forests? I have. Some of them are so littered with dead and dying trees that they are nearly impassable. I can tell you unequivocally that if something isn't done to reduce the risk of wildfire and disease in these old forests, they're toast.

The forests of which I speak dominate the West because most of our great national forests are mature - and some of them are downright old. Do we Americans still want to try to protect these old forests? I assume so, but you can't do it by leaving them to the vagaries of nature. Nature doesn't give a damn about our needs.

On a sparkling October morning in 1996, I walked for several miles on the Cumberland Plateau in east Tennessee with a man I was to come to admire more than words can say. His name is Alan Houston. He is a PhD wildlife biologist on the famed Ames Plantation at Grand Junction, Tennessee. We were walking through a towering oak grove when he turned to me out of the blue and said something so memorable that I can still repeat it verbatim. He said, "When we leave forests to nature, as so many people today seem to want to do, we get whatever nature serves up, which can be pretty devastating at times, but with forestry we have options, and a degree of predictability not found in nature."

At its core, this is what the debate over management of our nation's great public forests is really about. Who do we trust: man or nature? I love nature, but I trust man. Unlike nature, we are able to make conscious decisions and carry them out in ways that benefit humankind. We do this through our system of laws and regulations, which are a reflection of the things that we as a society value most.

Do we no longer value these old forests?

The mere fact that House Energy and Commerce Committee members are unwilling to include these forests in the new renewable energy standard tosses them on society's ash heap. It says that our Democrat-controlled Congress is willing to gamble on the vagaries of nature rather than entrust these aging forests to scientists and foresters who know how to do the thinning and stewardship work necessary to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires and insect and disease infestations that are killing them.

These forests are in big trouble. Somewhere between 60 and 80 million acres are now in what fire ecologists call "Condition Class 3" or "Condition Class 2." In layman's term, Class 3 forests are ready to burn. Class 2 forests soon will be.

We spend over $1 billion a year putting out fires in these forests - and not a damned dime to reduce the risk of fire before it occurs. Yes, I know a modest effort has been mounted to protect rural communities from these god-awful fires, but we are doing woefully little to protect the forest. Why? We have the knowledge and we have the tools. What we lack is political courage in the face of Beltway environmental organizations whose only concern is retaining the political power they hold over many in Congress.

Members of Congress who support this latest round of nonsense will quickly rise to tell us they've even included so-called "natural" forests in the energy standard. These are forests that reseed themselves as opposed to forest plantations. But in the bill's language, the only natural forests that will be included are those that reseed themselves after the bill is signed into law. Why? To make doubly sure that no one is able to lift a finger to keep nature from destroying the old forests we already have. That's why.

This gets worse. Also excluded from the new renewable energy standard are national monuments [Aren't we trying to protect these special places?] and roadless areas that actually have roads in them. These areas are also in very tough shape, a result of years of Congressional neglect. The government's own management plans for many of these areas call for long overdue thinning. What's the delay?

If you are laboring under the impression that including accessible federal lands in the renewable energy standard violates environmental laws, you can rest easy. Not one law, not the Endangered Species Act, the National Forest Management Act or the National Environmental Policy Act - among others - is circumvented in any way. In fact, I would argue, at least in principle, that not including these areas in the new renewable energy standard violates these laws.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee has embraced a horrible precedent-setting environmental policy. It is the antithesis of the landscape approach to forest management that so many conservation groups, including the widely respected Nature Conservancy and numerous habitat conservation groups have been advocating for more than a decade.

I find this latest round of congressional callousness and cynicism almost incomprehensible. With a wink and a nod, members of Congress who back this proposal can go home and tell their concerned constituents that they voted to include national forests in the new renewable energy standard. But they didn't. Instead, they again genuflected at the altar of extreme radical environmentalism. This is more than disgusting. It's criminal.

I'd like to think Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats can get this legislation fixed before the House votes, but if they can't it will be up to the U.S. Senate to rescue of our great national forests from wildfire and neglect before it is too late.