Debate Topic: Environmentalism (Little Upsilon)

"we should try out best to never cause extinction to other life"

99.9% of all life to have ever lived on Earth are now extinct. The deck is stacked even against us. Climate change is inevitable. It has happened naturally several times. We may, however, Help it change quicker.

"It seams like a promising energy sector, which may be able to compete with fuel dependent energy sectors."

Responsibility would greatly reduce the demands for fossil fuels and such. I.E. Don't leave your lights, TV's and computers on all day. It also means that maybe you all should walk or ride a bicycle instead of driving. For most people, a 1 mile ride to the store won't kill you.

"Also to all you fat arse Americans. Stop fucking consuming so much, its not like an eating competition, what will you ever do when there is nothing left to consume?"

Australia is now the fattest country in the world. The U.S. is a close second. Percentage wise of course. The consumtion is a Global catastrophy. It is linked to a corrupt and greedy global capitalistic society. Capitalism is fueled by consumtion. The more you buy, the more money the people who OWN EVERYTHING make. No one is innocent. Even Me. Greed is one of the seven deadly sins for a reason and if your religious or not, you can agree that it is bad. It is Greed that prevents proper regulations from being enabled because "Their too expensive" (Please read that quote in the high pitched tone of a spoiled fat kid).
Greed will always double cross us and we igore the fact that we can't take the money with us when we die.

Once again, the world will only improve if everyone takes the steps to improve it. If not, this whole conversation is pointless.

Geothermal is great, nuclear energy (heat from Earth's core) without the waste problem.

Sigh

The Malthusian disciples are in great supply.

You have no idea how depressing it is for an old guy like me to see so much lack of imagination and narrowmindedness in todays youth. Your failure to grasp history and science can easily be forgiven as your educational system has failed you miserably, filling your minds with trans-scientific garbage and historical propaganda.

You are victims of a generations long misinformation campaign to indoctrinate you politically. You repeat the platitudes and attitudes that you have been drowning in for all your lives and congratulate yourselves on your erudition.

You echo the smallminded philosophies that Malthus proposed that we are doomed by our very natures to self annihilation. We will procreate, eat, heat, drive, entertain, work, or war ourselves to oblivion.

Depite thousands of years of human history that proclaims exactly the opposite!

We grow wealthier, more efficient at providing every resource we require or desire, and live longer than ever before.

And because we do, we posess the means to address the only real economic scarcity that matters to the environment:

the scarcity of wilderness.

I speak of those wild areas removed from the economic sector whose existence is justified by their own beauty, be they forest, wetland, or desert.

Allow the words of the original American Conservationist to express my meaning.

"In these geatest of the world's hunting grounds there are mountain peaks whose snows are dazzling under the equatorial sun; swamps where the slime oozes and bubbles and festers in the steaming heat; lakes like seas; skies that burn above deserts where the iron desolation is shrouded from view by the wavery mockery of the mirage; vast grassy plains where palms and thorn-trees fringe the dwindling streams; mighty rivers running out of the heart of the continent through the sadness of endless marshes; forests of georgeous beauty, where death broods in the dark and silent depths.....
There are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness, that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy, and its charm; the silent attraction of the silent places; the awful glory of sunrise and sunset in the wide waste spaces of the earth, unworn of man, and changed only by the slow changes of the ages through time everlasting."
-Theodore Roosevelt, on his African travels

That is appreciation of the natural world.

Not the embrace of all the pessimistic, self loathing prophecies of impending doom that define the soft green agenda.

Not the mindless slavery to computer modeled holocausts that potend disaster in every trace molecule of pollution, every minute shift in the gobal climate, every additional scap of food grown or product consumed by human kind.

You blithely ignore your own history when you spout this nonsense of the evils of consumption that will exhaust every resource we have.

Your ignorance is exalted when you ignore the driving force of human history: Human creativity and innovation.

That force that has created wealth and comfort beyond imagining to our forebearers for even the poorest among us as evidenced in your participation in this, the most providential of human creations to date, the Internet.

You sadden an old heart when you demonstrate your failures to think and analyze the world around you. To even grasp the reality in which you live.

But alas, Malthus would be so proud of his intellectual children.

FarmerBob, you said, 'You have no idea how depressing it is for an old guy like me to see so much lack of imagination and narrowmindedness in todays youth.'

I say that peace of mind and freedom creates the time for this imagination and openmindedness that all should have. But when I look at the world and the threats that befall upon us, I do not feel any peace of mind or freedom to allow anykind of imagination to distort the information I receive.
For all youth openmindedness will be used, up until the point where information becomes reality. Then the mind has no need to question the information and the mind then concentraites on dealing with the reality. Which in it's self requires an openmind.
I think the only thing the youth lack is imagination, which has come about from/with the over load of information that they/we all receive. Creating a situation where the only way to cope is to just focus on the day and not the future.
What do you think going to happen in the next 20 years FarmerBob?
If you where 15 and you saw all the worlds problems, not just your own towns or state or countrys, but the whole of the worlds problems, would you want to think about the future?

Imagine all the people living life in..........

Hope only comes when you face your problems.
And it is quite clear we have a problem with the enviroment. How big a problem will only be known when it happens, which we can't allow to happen, so we will never know.
But now is the time to do the things to make sure we don't find out. We'll, 40 years ago would have been the better time, but hey, no point crying over spilt milk. We just need to make sure we don't spill any more.

"but hey, no point crying over spilt milk."

Bullshit! Have you seen the price of milk these days?! It costs more than beer and gas!

Given the limitations of this medium, I will endevour to keep as brief as possible the expression of the tenets of conservation that promise to protect and preserve the environment, as opposed to the presciptions of centralized planning and inefficiencies of the soft greens.

SCARCITY

Economic Scarcity

There is no inherent scarcity of food, fuel, metal, mineral, or space to bury our our trash. We will undoubtedly exhaust some goods, some day. But our history has proven beyond all doubt that we will grow, find, or invent other things, means, or methods to replace them. No Law of geophysics, biology, enginerring, or economics decrees: So far, but no further. With ordinary economic goods, free markets and human ingenuity transcend all limits.
To avert any economic scarcity, we need only do as we have always done: unleash markets.

Green Scarcity

The one real and growing scarcity is the scarcity of wilderness and the wildlife that dwells there. Scarcity of forest, lake, and river. Scarcity of marsh and shoreline. Scarcity of places undeveloped by markets and untouched by the hand of man. What grows scarce is not the land and livestock man can tame, cultivate, or exploit; but, the land and life he chooses not to.
The one true scarcity is not economic, it is un-economic.
We must commit to the maintaining and expanding of uneconomic forests, lakes, shores, wetlands, and wilderness.

HARD PATHS OVER SOFT

Hard Agriculture

A pest-resistant corn that doublesthe farmer's yield per acre saves something that is environmentally important: land itself. So is a growth hormone that delivers more cow and milk on less pasturage. Fertilizers, pesticides, packaging , and preservatives are the chemical keys to the best solar-powered systems in existence today. They permit us to capture more energy from the sun, more efficiently, using less land. In return for the modest investments of energy and materials to create them, they substantially boost the performance of the finest solar power engines on Earth: green plants. Hard agricultural practices create more edible calories using much less land. Soft alternatives like "organics" are inefficient and wasteful, requiring much more acreage for the same useable produce; thus, it is much less green.
The rain forests can be saved by modern agricultural practices in the third world that will obviate the need to carve out the biodiverse wilderness for new farmland, just as it did in the industrialized world.

Hard Power

Hard power extracts more energy from less of the Earth's living surface. The smaller the footprint, the greater the benefit for the land. Therefore, nuclear power is greener than oil or gas, which is greener than coal, which is greener than biomass and soft alternatives that require use of living spaces to provide corresponding less energy. The greenest of energy sources are those that provide the most energy per acre of land covered, cultivated, paved, or stripped. Per unit of power produced, softer sources consume more materials, labor, and worst, land. Policies that promote soft energy do not protect the natural world, they hasten its destruction.

Hard Technology

Per init of output, large, centralized industrial plants are usually much cleaner and efficient than the decentralized, low tech alternatives they displace. It is far more efficient to burn oil in the huge, meticulously maintained boiler of a central power plant than to burn it in the furnaces of thousands of homes, even after we allow for losses in the transmission of electricity from the plant to the end user. It is more efficient, cleaner, and greener to burn fuel and distribute electricity than to refine fuel and disribute gasoline.
The technology of the atom is the greenest of all.
The soft objections to hard technology revolve around the irrational fear of Sand Pile Theory disasters. The real complexity that is inherent to biodiversity and championed by softs its denounced by them in man's activities. Their models are built around the phenomena of the positive feedback loop that will always show the pile of sand building slowly until that last critical grain causes catastrophic collapse of the pile. Unfortunately, despite the attractiveness of the metaphor, and its appeal to certain atavisms in human psychology, reality is not a sand pile. Negative feedback is the norm and balances and stabilizes complex systems. The popular Sand Pile Theory only describes pile of sand, little else.
Therefore, despite our imaginations, technology provides green solutions.
Nuclear power is superior because it provides massive amounts of power for relatively tiny amounts of raw material. Irradiation of our food is an excellent preservative because it disrupts the chemical bonds we want disrupted, the ones salmonella need to live. Improved genes in rice or the lettuce leaf substitute for a chemical plant producing phosphates and fertilizers which substitute for thousands of hectares of land which need not be cultivated. Hormones that promote bovine growth or pesticides that target hormonal systems of insects are efficient and safe because they are so specifically aimed at such pricise molecular targets. It is the peasant fear of the lightning storm that fuels dire, soft predictions of disaster by our use of technology.

Living In Three Dimensions

Hard technology saves the Earth because it enables us to live in three dimensions rather than two. We do not favor gathering our fuels from the living surface, spreading out our activity unnecessarily as soft green policies encourage. We promote the conservation of wilderness and species by scraping less for our biosphere and living more from its sterile and lifeless depths. We believe in digging for our energy, closing the carbon loop and burying our wastes, and leaving more of the surface undisturbed by man.

Wealth Is Green

Wealth, not poverty, supplies the means for the preservation of wildlife, forest, seashore, and ocean.
History proves unequivocally that the rich societies are not the depoilers, the exhausters, the expropriators of the planet's biological wealth. Environmentalism is a phenomenom of the industrialized West, not the Third World or the former Soviet Bloc.
Poverty does not limit population, it causes its explosion. Look no further than world birth rates. Affluence allows parents to raise fewer, healthier children. The negative birth rates of our western societies confirm this. Therefore, attacking the mechanisms of wealth creation and the means by which we so abundantly feed ourselves is the height of stupidity in addressing environmental concerns. We must look to increase the prosperity of our less affluent neighbors rather than make the causes of their poverty as our own.
The rich man has the means to remove land from economic activity and thus ensure its posterity. The poor man can only struggle to use whatever means are readily at hand to feed himself. Most often, as history demonstrates, at the direct expense of the natural world.

Continued.

Pollution

Much progress has been made,(depite media and political hype to the contrary), with some of the worst sources of pollution: industrial smokestacks, car emmisions, industrial effluents, sewage, and home combustion of dirty coal and wood. But, there is still much to be done, as our societal definitions and acceptance of pollution is ever evolving.
Formulating effective abatement strategies that promote real green ends is not easy in this political climate, however. Simple-minded approaches that feel good superficially often fail or backfire. The reality is that human pollutants are by-products, externalities of the market. Therefore, they cannot be any more preditable in the long term than the market itself. Only rational solutions that reinternalize market externalities promise to reduce our levels of pollutions without causing greater damage to the environment through ill conceived,wealth destroying, or even more wasteful measures.

Turning Pollution Into Prosperity

Serious pollutants are best addressed in ways that neither expand the inefficient public sector nor undermine established private property rights. The issuing of permits in quantities that mirror established patterns of activity and use has proven to be the most effictive and economically effective way to proceed. It is also the greenest. By establishing limits to acceptable levels of pollution and permitting smaller amounts of new pollution, we reduce the overall quantities produced. The market creation of direct competitive subsitutes for this "permitted" pollution is new pollution abatement technology. The more people can buy, sell, and trade pollution and permits, the more pollution we abate. Government and private parties participate in these markets as well, purchasing permits for the purpose of retiring them. The successful use of this strategy has been conclusively proven.
The limits of such an approach are not with the markets, but the politics of those who unrealistically believe that we can somehow legislate all real and perceived pollution out of existence overnight, or attemptimg to define such products of nature, eg. carbon, as pollutants subject to regulation. Whereas, sulfur dioxide is a easy to identify and measure from man made sources, chemicals produced by nature all around us, and in quantities that dwarf our own, are beyond regulatory grasp and common sense. Thus, Cap and Trade is effective at reducing man made pollution but not applicable to reducing global carbon levels.
Privatizing pollution works.

The Micro-Environment

Some micro-pollutants are conclusively established to do real harm. When such harms are reliably identified, their sources should be contained.
However, we reject the casual presumption of guilt before innocence in the micro-environmental realm. Most of the time, pursuits of the extra part per billion prove to be more wasteful that the pollution itself. Most consume more energy, material, time, endanger more lives, generate more real pollution, dissipate more value, than the thing pursued. Chasing after the micro threat should have a clear stopping point where fears begin to outweigh scientific evidence of harm. As a geberal rule, we are far better off putting our money and efforts to uses where clear environmental returns can be directly realized. How much more environmental good could have been done by buying up green spaces, riverbanks, watersheds, and forests with the tens of billions that were poured into the bureaucracy of superfund?
Better to direct environmental spending away from the trans-scientific pursuit of micro-environmental phantasms and toward the conservation of wilderness.

Natures Role

Spending our wealth on visible green objectives does more to advance invisible ones, as well. Nature has a power to cleanse, detoxify and regenerate that dwarfs our own. Sufficiently dispersed in space and time, most pollutants are, in fact, harmlessly dissipated, broken down, and biologically recycled. The planet is vast, and nature immeasureably robust. History, again, shows us that nature has extraordinary power to recover and recapture landscape leveled by man, or nature itself.
Wilderness conservation is the cheapest, most effective, and greenest way to cleanse the micro-environment. The most beautiful way to purify water is probably the most effective too. Maintain unspoiled watersheds. Plant trees.

Continued.

ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS

Takings

Where we have market externalities in the form of pollution, we must also acknowledge the existence of governmental externalities, as well. In Anglo-American Jurisprudence, this takes the form of uncompensated takings.
When individual producers dump some of the true costs of production onto the environment, they produce the illusion of prosperity while they impoverish society as a whole. When governments dump some of the true costs of government on our private economies, they create the illusion of good government and "doing something" while they impoverish society as a whole.
In markets and governments, alike, returns don't just diminish, they go negative.
Rational Policy must begin by defining and permitting a status quo, in a manner that does not destroy our societys' lines between public and private activity that are vital to maintaining civil society and economic health.
From that starting point, wilderness areas should be preserved and expanded, pollution abated responsibly through market principles, and trans-scientific hysteria resisted everywhere it rears its head.

Honest Bookkeeping

Government and the private sector, alike, must maintain honest green accounts. Environmental markets, markets for pollution and its abatement, require honest accounting, just as every market does. That means keeping track of credits aw well as debits. Growing new trees, for example, removes carbon from the air. So does mummifying organic and plastic waste in landfills. If we are serious about green objectives, we must keep honest books, with due allowances on both sides of the ledger. Absolutist positions, inflamed by hysteria, that prevent us from doing so block all progress, whether through markets or conventional regulation.

Private and Public Conservation

Private conservation is, by a large measure, the most important form of conservation we have. It allows for small scale removal of land from economic activity that adds up to great deal of new wilderness. Conservancy Trusts in the US are the largest growing source of reclaimed land.
We must recognize, however, that the vastness of the Everglades or the Sequioa National Forest, of river archipelogos and coral reefs, the sheer scope and scale of the most ambitious conservation projects require a government's reach.
Private fences cannot always conserve the value of the wilderness. Great, wide open spaces are valuable because they are great and open. A vital part of Yellowstone's grandeur is that it belong's not to Wall Street, but to all Americans. Value that is inherent to citizenship, nation, and patriotic pride. Such values cannot be contained or conserved in private markets. To privatize here is to destroy.
Government can play an essential role in husbanding and expanding the wilderness. The point of conservation is to be economically inefficient and unproductive, but within well defined spaces, set aside for that specific purpose. Government can and should advance that purpose, but recognize its limitations and leave economic purposes to the market.

Government Ends

Taking control of the "environment", literally that which surrounds, is an enormous political opportunity that many political opportunists are eager to embrace. It is an opportunity to be bureaucratic, manipulative, and pervasively intrusive into people's everyday lives. From our lightbulbs, toilets, hair care products, cars, and reproductive choices, nothing is too small or personal for these types to wish to regulate. For them, environmentalism and the reach it promises is political ambrosia.
However, so long as people of that mind-set are given control, the environment inevitably suffers. Look no further than the environmental devastation wrought by the central planners of the defunct Soviet Empire.

Environmental GeoPolitics

America can and is controlling pollution in its own rivers and air, whatever happens in China and Brazil. We should save our cougars whether or not brazil saves its jaguars or China its tigers.
But there is only one global climate, and there is, increasingly, only one global market for steel, petrochemicals, aluminum, and many other energy intensive, potentially polluting industries. Relocating factories to China and Dubai that are escaping absolutist environmental regulations will not help the environment. It will harm it. Overfishing of the oceans, a serious problem, will not be solved by substituing Japanese dragnets for American ones.
It a fraud to set about solving a collective problem piecemeal, here but not there, north but not south, west but not east, one industry but not another, and importantly, debits, but not credits. A commons problem arises because it is a shared resource with no single actor with the ability to address it alone or in small groups. Solutions that aren't universal and uniform are a complete waste of time and resources.
Environmental resources need to be transformed into universal property rights under the jurisdiction of existing national government authorities. Specifically, responsible, democratic governments that affirm and support the rule of law. Then, perhaps, small progresses may be made on environmental issues.
However, negotiating our environmental future with the many thieves, liars, and bandits who call themselves statesmen and crowd the halls of the UN is worse than useless. These nations cannot be trusted to affirm property, regulatory norms, or anything remotely related to the rule of law. Therefore, hobbling our own productivity voluntarily only accomplishes our own impoverishment to the benefit of nations who don't give a damn about us or our environment.

FB. You have no faith in common sense. Just because these thieves, liars, and bandits who call themselves statesmen and crowd the halls of the UN, act the way they do in the name of power, survival is a different matter. Instead of going home and looking at the life they have created for their children through their underhanded ways, they look at their children and know that for them they have to do what they can. If the USA had not dismissed the KYOTO protocall out of hand, by now there would be an understanding through out the world on what needs to be done and who can do what. Instead of now trying to work out what the USA wants to do. If the USA worked with the UN all would be well. But as the USA is run by big business and remains to have a overwhelming ego too GO GO USA! The enviroment will remain a problem being solved by single actors.

nix. Your naivete is truly amazing. On every issue that crosses these forums, you express the Leftist party line to the letter.

Had you been born in 1920's Germany, you undoubtedly would have become a die hard NAZI under ReichsErzeihung. In Soviet Russia, a believing Leninist under Party doctrine.

The Great Lies of history have always required a populace too afraid or lazy to think for themselves. Now, another great lie is being perpetrated before your very eyes, the evidence is right before you, plain to see. Yet, you prove to be a shining example of how effective propaganda can be.

You prattle about common sense, use some.

Bob I agree with the majority of your points. And no I do understand and agree that industrialization is a necessary evil. I wouldn't want to try and argue that 3rd world countries shouldn't try and develop. Its if the planet is capable of supporting 6 billion American style consumers. I wasn't referring to food with my food metaphor, you consume around a quarter of the worlds oil production and only have reserves for 3% of the world's oil production that the point I'm making. Stop being so wasteful just because you can.

Godwins law Bob, come on you should have better points then resort to that. Nix does make a valid point though, why hasn't the US ratified Kyoto?
At the very least its tarnished America's reputation with the international community (spose Bush couldn't have damaged America's reputation any more even if he wanted to). For you that say there is nothing to be done about global warming and we shouldn't risk economies to try and fix it. Well alight if there is nothing to be done then my countries economy is fucked anyway so whats your solution to that?

Thank god. An honest opinion based on thought.

Your first point, Angus. Oil is the first scarcity of which we are dealing with the need to restructure our technologies. Granted that the US is the prime consumer of petroleum products, but we are also the prime producers of goods at a higher rate. By per capita use of petroproducts, we are among the most efficient.
However, consumption is not particularly relevant to the issue. Our historical economical data demonstrate that economic growth is directly tied and proportional to energy consumption. We can't ungrow. That is economic recession and depression. As I postulated above, wealth creation promotes environmental health in the long run. We will consume more as we grow, but that needn't be a negative. Getting hung up on attacking demand side consumption isn't really relevant to supply side issues. We can't conserve our way to economic or environmental well being by forcing artificial frugalities on the market. Oil price will force the improvements in efficiencies and shift to alternate supply all by itself. Attempts to force the issue only result in economic dislocation and increased inefficiencies.
We are impatient and expect to see changes overnight, but the scarcity of oil is already forcing changes in millions of decision vectors across the market. That is the invisible hand at work.
It can't be forced by central planners who only make the problems worse.
So your exhortation to stop being so wasteful doesn't really hold water. We have the production to justify our energy consumption and the efficiencies to lecture most of the world about their wastefulness.

As for Godwin's law, the Third Reich is a perfect metaphor and case study for the disastrous political indoctrination of an otherwise educated, cosmopolitan population. My reference was to nix's blind obedience to leftist dogma despite having more than sufficient resources to develope independent thought , not a direct comparison of him to Hitler.

Kyoto was and is a farce on multiple levels. Foremost, the basic science behind global warming is problematical, at best, egregious trans-science at worst. Therefore, the need to "do something" is politically popular, but for reasons of politics, not science or what's good for the environment.
The premise of the GreenHouse Effect is entirely theoretical.(No one has built a scale model of the earth to test it). It actually depends on water vapor and cloud formation that must be ignored to get any kind of sense from the models. Trans-science at work. See above posts.
By extension, the role of carbon in this theoretical exercise is also largely a collection of guesstimates. However, for sake of argument, let's look at the basic numbers as best as we can calculate them.

Plants, the green kind, breathe out around 50 billion tons of carbon dioxide and absorb back roughly 100 billion in photosynthesis. Soil organisms emit 50 billion. Around 100 billion more physically diffuse into the atmosphere out of the oceans, and about 104 billion diffuse back in. That's Mother Nature's contribution to the "problem". We evil, rapacious humans emit around 6 billion by burning fossil fuels and another 2 billion through deforestation. The bottom line guestimate: around 3 billion tons in excess carbon annually.
Here's the rub and the one we don't talk about.
What the cumulative margins of error in these estimates?
If you have any science education, red lights should be flashing in your brain right now. We know that we can't physically measure these numbers or test them, so how much faith are we supposed to place in them?
This is trans-science at work. Despite the arrogance of politicians and "scientists" who damn well know what crap this is, the carbon cycle is just too large for us to measure to have any confidence at all with what we are dealing. Of course, that kind of honesty doesn't get votes for the politicians, share rating for the media, or grant money for the scientists.
But there it is. we just don't know.

To continue the argument, let us grant that the numbers are dead accurate and the effects of carbon on the perfected Green House Effect models are exactly as theorized.
So what does Kyoto propose to accomplish?

To reduce by 5.2% of 1990 levels, greenhouse gasses in the developed countries over a four year period.

How?

Regulatory processes and "Cap and Trade." Cap and trade works though, right? We've used it for years on man made pollutants, haven't we?

There is a big difference here though. The real pollutants we currently regulate are easily identified and monitored at their industrial sources. We can test for compliance at the Acme Paper Clips plant to determine what pollutants they produce and how much. But Carbon? It's everywhere. Where do we put the scrubbers? Do we make employees breathe less? What if we are coastal and oceanic co2 production rises? Do we blame everyone downwind? We could on and on and on.
It is utterly unworkable, wasteful, and fraudulent.
What is does do quite well is place new regulatory authority into the hands of a new supernational bureaucracy with the granted authority to override national sovereignty in the signatories. Now that's some pretty cool power. Exactly the sort to give politicians of a certain bent a big, fat woody.
However, let's say we do it and it all works perfectly as planned. Are we saved?

No. It would take 30,000 Kyotos to have the desired effects using their own numbers, if the basic science is valid.

So no measurable benefit to the environment, at the expense of billions of dollars running to trillions for what, exactly?

Then there is the little publicized fact that North America is a carbon sink. That's right, campers. Atmospheric CO2 levels are lower off of our East Coast than our West Coast, especially so up in Canada's airspace.

Can we charge Europe and Asia for reducing their carbon?

Or what if we put that money to use buying equatorial rain forest?

Hi FarmerBob. So let me get you straight. You think the only way to save our kids enviroment is for us to conserve land, trees and wild life and let the ones who are destroying land, consuming tree's and poluting wild life to just get on with it and hope it all balances out in the end?

What if we just melt the polar ice caps down and plant trees there to replace the ones we are already chopping down! Why has nobody thought of that?!??!? It's flawless!

BC

Take a deep breath and read, nix. Pollution, the real man-made kind, is being addressed and abated in the Western nations. You may embrace your trans-scientific prophecies of macro or micro doom, but the world continues to spin and all the indicators of human health and wealth continue to rise. Your prophecies are much more intersesting as a study in abnormal group psychology, than anything to do with actual science or the natural world.

A central feature of your argument always hovers around a notion than modern human existence is at direct odds with the well being of the natural world. That is a philosophical/religious point of view, not one supported by any kind of scientific discipline.

Deforestation is a Third World problem. We can either:
a. help those countries modernize their agricultural practices to reduce the need for farmland.
b. conquer and recolonize them in the name of the environment, preventing destructive practices by force.

And yes. What the hell kind of environmentalist doesn't give a damn about actual wilderness?

Your kind. The modern kind. The ones who are much more concerned about dictating how people should live their lives than anything to do with the actual natural world.

Nature for you people is an intellectual concept or a computer model.

This is why environmentalists are a huge threat to nature.

Thank you for making that clear to the others here.

BorderC. You are aware of course, the US has undertaken massive reforestation since reaching our low point in the early 1920's. Today's timber reserves are greater than at any point since European colonization, as near as we can tell.

Reforestation isn't what you think Farmerbob. It's all the same tree, planted in straight lines. Like a tree farm. So "reforestation" is really "Replanting a certain type a trees in a style that will allow easier harvesting in the future". That 's the long and the short of it.

Now, if you look at a picture of Yellowstone 100yrs ago, then compare it to a modern picture, you will notice A LOT more trees.
Essentially turning it into a tinder box. Which directly leads into the point of this post-

"Enviromentalism" like anything else has it's appropriate place and time. If it wasn't for the Enviromentalism in our society, they would still be dumping Mercury in our rivers. On the other hand, PETA is a joke. A money drive.


Now, lets take a step back and look at what we've learned today.

If someone is dumping toxic chemicles into rivers, stop them. When humans can get quickly harmed, then enviromentalist views serve a good purpose.

When a crazy, unshaven hippie chick yells at me for wearing leather boots- That's were I draw the line. They don't understand that we can't save every animal and Humans, in fact, are omnivores. That's why we have the teeth we have. our systems are set up to eat meat among other things.

So, in my opinion, Peta can go choke on a lamb.

Yes. Tree farming does represent a fraction of reforestation efforts. Natural regrowth on public and private lands represents more. And Conservancy Trusts represent the largest growing sector of removal of lands from economic exploitation.

I'm sorry, but I missed your point in there Poobah. New growth of any sort is the most effective carbon sink we know, so I fail to see the relevance of differentiating between organized harvesting strategies and other efforts. More trees is a good thing.

The discussion of practices of the US Forest Service and their spotty record is another issue entirely.

There seems to be a reoccurring theme is some responses that somehow questioning modern environmental trans-science translates into advocacy for unregulated dumping practices?

The Clean Air Act of 1963 as well as the Clean Water Act of 1972 were passed and the EPA chartered before environmentalism went off into the realms of trans-science and professional politics.

No one, least of all me, is calling for the repeal of this legislation or the abolishment of the EPA. Tightly monitoring industrial effluents, mercury,etc., was addressed long before soft greens annointed themselves the sole spokesmen for Nature.

Allow me to repeat.

NOONE IS ADVOCATING DUMPING MERCURY INTO RIVERS!

This is typical of the difference between hard and soft greens. The hard green acknowledges that is impossible to reduce our environment to the sterility of a surgical suite and that there are logical stopping points to pollution abatement efforts where returns don't just diminish, they go negative. Soft greens acknowledge no such stopping points and lambast any calls for reason as somehow excusing or championing real, observable, measurable pollution.

As I continually try to remind people at every opportunity, the world is not black and white, all or none. Absolutist thinking in environmentalism or any other subject is incredibly corrosive to free societies.

"Today's timber reserves are greater than at any point since European colonization, as near as we can tell."

This is absolutely false! The US old growth forests are at 10% of what they were at the turn of the 19th century. Most of the trees that are replanted are varieties that are scientifically altered thru gene reconstruction/manipulation that maximize growth. These newer breeds, mainly the Planter Pine, are very suseptable to disease and moths...the population of both have exploded and are now threatening entire forests of old-growth. Not to mention the new fire danger added by this dryer variety tree.
Also, the harvest cycle of these new planters is 25 years avg, which SOUNDS good to us, but the truth is that it takes the forest at least 80-100 years to completly heal from clear-cutting. 4 harvests per century hardly helps the eco-system any.

To me there are very few options as far as a pollution turn-around goes...short of a mass-human die-off of 3 billion, we are doomed.

Dirt


PS-FB, you are pretty damn smart, wish you were not such an optomist! We could use an advocate like you on our side. hehe

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This is absolutely false! The US old growth forests are at 10% of what they were at the turn of the 19th century. Most of the trees that are replanted are varieties that are scientifically altered thru gene reconstruction/manipulation that maximize growth. These newer breeds, mainly the Planter Pine, are very suseptable to disease and moths...the population of both have exploded and are now threatening entire forests of old-growth.
Also, the harvest cycle of these new planters is 25 years avg, which SOUNDS good to us, but the truth is that it takes the forest at least 80-100 years to completly heal from clear-cutting. 4 harvests per century hardly helps the eco-system any.<!-/Quote-!>

Dirt. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Trans scientific garbage without the slightest evidence to support it. If you want to look at carbon absorbtion, it's exactly backwards.

You are looking at a very small sample of timber industry practices, in some areas, in compliance with Federal Regulations and falsely expanding it to encompass the entire argument.

I've heard this over and over again. The Old Growth/New Growth debate has been raging for decades. It also typifies the frustration inherent in trying to deal rationally with soft greens. Yes. I am an optimist. History gives me every reason to be. Soft greens are Malthusian pessimists. It is a misanthropic, sociopathic viewpoint that is nearly impossible to reason with. We hard greens reforest and encourage the preservation of our natural world and softs whine that it isn't the right growth. It never will be to you folks. You have no stopping points. We are all doomed and you have your trans-scientific mysticism to bolster your faith in Apocolypse NOW.

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To me there are very few options as far as a pollution turn-around goes...short of a mass-human die-off of 3 billion, we are doomed.<!-/Quote-!>

Why 3 billion? Why not 3 million? or 3? what kind of response do want to that nonsense?

Jesus is coming back and will fix your ass?
Shiva will destroy us all?
Allah doesn't care about trees?
The Aliens will fix it when they return Elvis to be king of the World?

Religious views have no place in this discussion. Something I can't seem to get through nix's thick head either.

The bottom line is simple enough. You don't need degrees in Environmental Science to get it.

For those who actually care about our natural world, any growth beats the hell out of new malls and suburbs.

It isn't the trace chemicals in asphalt that destroys wilderness, it's the steamroller.

"Jesus is coming back and will fix your ass?
Shiva will destroy us all?
Allah doesn't care about trees?
The Aliens will fix it when they return Elvis to be king of the World? "

My stance isn't any of the above. A 3 billion die-off is what Mother Nature does to species that get out of hand, no? No species is allowed to thrive TOO much. Just ask a lemming. Balance.

"Trans scientific garbage without the slightest evidence to support it. "

Once again, this is a debate on our veiws that really shouldn't be cluttered with long, boring statistics and studies. This should be a collection of what we see and believe.

Once supper is done I will answer to the aove quote and say why I'm not wrong. My Ag studies have taught me much about both sides of the fence.

Dirt

Save your time, Dirt. You are going to hit me with trans-scientific garbage about a very limited practice that is barely relevant to the larger environmental issues.

Should certain species of trees be succeptible to certain pests in certainly important to the timber industry, whose livelihoods are dependent on the health of their products.

Gypsy Moths are a recurring problem in the NorthEast.

What of it? We are reforesting, we are headed in the right direction.

Nitpicking minutae does not advance the argument and it never ends.

I respect your education and perhaps you have a point, but again, what of it?

If these trees are a problem, they will be harvested and another species planted.

Or is this another harbinger of doom?

Get to some evidence for the 3 billion number.

I say it's 15.654893 billion. At least 3.832% who must be redheads. Otherwise, the aliens will return in their mother ships and kill us all. :D

I agree with Dirt. Us humans cannot continue thumbing our noses at mother nature. There IS a set order in which things work and humans think we can create our own order. To think we can do what we want is ignorant. The truth is, in the eyes of the universe we are all insugnificant.
I do respect your opinions, but I must disagree. We are made of this earth. In a sense, it is that which is our creator. It is what gives us life. Maybe some respect is in order?
Also, to completely discredit any religious or spiritual beliefs is extremely ignorant. FB, you are an intelligent person. I can easily tell, but can you, with all of your knowledge and education, tell me what created the universerse? What created the very first Atom? What pushed energy from basic atoms to a living cell?
Untill Science can answer that, Faith can never be fully discredited. I believe, personally, that the truth is infact a merge of the two. Faith and science.
Poo-bah

P.S. Peta still sucks

Fair enough, Poobah.

However, your metaphors aside, we live in a free society with religious freedom as a key part of the foundation. Therefore, any religion based belief has no proper place in our national policies. Yes. I am fully aware of how much of our jurisprudence is wrapped up in Christian dogma, but that doesn't excuse creating more.

Environmental issues are relevant to our society, for hard, applicable reasons. Reasons that are founded upon, or supposed to be founded upon, valid scientific principles. We don't pray for clean drinking water. We engineer the means to ensure a clean water supply.

Metaphysical arguments are good intellectual exercise and entertainment, but of little value in formulating rational public policy and regulation.

I may respect everyone's religious views, fully acknowledge their right to have them and practice them as they will, but don't expect me to accept them as argument or basis for government or societal decision making.

As a further note, I would like to thank you all who have been participating and very gracious with your praise.

This thread, at least, is meant to be conducted in good spirit and without indulgence in personal animosity.

We differ in views, but the exchange is healthy and informative. Please keep it up.