🚀 go-pugleaf

If we ensure every tree is 'safe' then we are left with a parody of
nature, a sanitised theme park where there is never any danger. Keeping
strictly to the human utility aspect of this argument and leaving aside
all the other issues, such as the arrogance of assuming every square
inch of the planet exists solely for our use, there is still the fact
that some of us enjoy experiencing nature in its unadulterated raw state
(as far as is possible) and we therefore have some say in this. If
people are afraid of trees falling on them they should avoid them.

There is a good argument for banning cars, as they have killed more
people in the last fifty years than were killed in the entire second
world war. This seems to me to be a bigger nuisance, and it would be
good if the tree puritans would leave the trees alone and concentrate on
this, if their concern is really with human life.

I suspect though that their concern is more to do with the legacy of
anal victorian tidyness and cleanliness we are still lumbered with, and
the 'danger' is that their narrow and self-centered view of the world is
threatened by views of wild, untamed, self-sufficient and rampant
nature, so they must control it.

A quotation seems appropriate here:
"If you step out of the radius of your campfires you feel that you are
brought face to face with forces over which you have no control; you are
surrounded by  handiwork that is not man1s, by swarming millions of
creatures that live out their little lives without the faintest
reference to you."
- Robert W.C. Shelford, 'A Naturalist in Borneo'.

-- 
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