Last night while waiting for my friends to go look at Christmas lights I met a guy who wanted me to sign a petition asking Governor Arnold to ask President Bush to not open up some federal land to logging and mining and recreation. So we sparred for a while and I nearly convinced him that private owners would manage the land more efficiently than the bloated federal government. I got his email address and just sent him the following:
Morgan,Here are a couple of interesting articles about logging, forest fires, and how modern "environmentalism" has actually caused a great deal of ecological damage.
Playing with fire
Fire in a healthy forestThe second more directly relates to why there is more forested land in North American now than there ever has been before, but I think the first article is even more interesting in that it addresses the larger issue of proper land management.
The federal government is not a very efficient or smart organization; in general, government at all levels mismanages everything it gets its hands on. Government is a necessary evil in some cases (the DMV
perhaps), but it's usually the worst possible solution to any problem.Privatizing land gives owners an incentive to take care of their property, and incentive which the government doesn't have, since politicians only care about being re-elected.
Michael
http://www.mwilliams.info
Saving the world, one leftist at a time.
Hey, good for you!
I'm amazed at your talent.
Ok, if you care about humans, log away, run your snowmobiles whereever you want, etc.
If you care about the earth... leave the land alone... our environment does not need our help, unless we intend on affecting it. We are the cause of all our problems and our environments... fire for example is good and bad for forests... heck, some species require fire to reproduce http://techalive.mtu.edu/meec/module11/FireandJackPine.htm
But the happy medium is not logging... unless you are going for CO2 reduction. For fire purposes you just need to clear the forest floor of dry, dead material. I can't remember the forest (I could have sworn it was the Black Forest in Germany) where they started just doing that and fires were drastically reduced. Which in turn led to the practice of doing so in other countries.
I am not an environmentalist, but I do care about our environment as I am a Meteorologist. I've studied this subject from a Professor who has fought forest fires and is called in for environmental disastors. Even he said there are pros and cons to all our options, but no matter what, its us that has a problem with the environment, not the environment that has a problem.
So you say it environmentalists that cause ecological problems? Reading that article did not prove that at all... it just proved that it caused econimical damage... there's a difference.
Trev: I do care about humans, and I also care about the environment because we have to live here and make our livings off it. But I don't care about it except insofar as it profits mankind.
If you'd read the articles you would have seen that clearing brush isn't enough. Without logging OR fires the trees themselves grow too densely to thrive. I'd prefer logging to fires. And sure, the environment doesn't "have a problem" because it's non-sentient. It couldn't "care" less what condition it's in because it has no feelings or awareness. If there's a problem, it's because the environment isn't configured in the way we want it to be, which means we should change it.