🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <23vb6k$hrv@iskut.ucs.ubc.ca> besler@gdss.commerce.ubc.ca (Steven Besler) writes:
><taganov@unixg.ubc.ca (Robert Edgar Froese) writes:
>
><Stephen Samuel 		(604)822-9248		samuel@cs.ubc.ca
><In Biblical times, Lebanon was known for its great cedars.
><What Rome did to Lebanon, we are now doing to BC.
______________
I hope you haven't mixed the attributions, as Mr. Samuel tends to disagree
with my arguments.

>I'm interested in further discussion about this issue.

[some deleted]

>Is the issue here "clearcutting" ? Or is it really just logging period? 
> 
>And what is the difference between logging and conventional
>agriculture, aside from the time it takes for a "crop" to 
>mature?
>
>Hopefully, that should start things rolling.
_____________
I believe that the issue is really neither logging or clearcutting, but
whether man has a right to shape his environment to suit his desires. 
Logging, and clearcutting as a logging method, is a visually dramatic
illustration of man doing this shaping.

Many people find logging to be distasteful and ugly.  This is to a degree
a recent phenomenon, as logging has taken place on a significant scale in
B.C. since the last half of the 1800's.  Why is this phenomenon recent?  I
believe the answer lies in the changing attitudes in society.

Why is Canada the best country on earth to live in (United Nations)?  Why
is the standard of living in industrial nations far superior to the rest
of the world?  Freedom.  We in Canada, and the US, have endured more
personal freedom than ever in the history of man.  This freedom,
represented by criminal law and propert rights, has provided man the
security to invest his most precious resource, his life, in the betterment
of his environment.  Without fear that the government, or a band of thugs,
would on impulse seize what each individual had laboured to create, man
has created the standard of living we enjoy today.  Technological
progress, for example, has changed the pattern of agriculture from where
over 80% of the US population were farmers in the late 1800's to today,
where less than 5% of the population grow more food than we can consume.

I believe that many North Americans have lost sight of the mechanisms
that built and continue to provide the prosperity that I have spoken of. 
My father said to me a year a go that never in his 54 years has he known
of a time where people are so comfortable, so affluent, yet so afraid. 
People have come to expect prosperity, to not question the cause of it.

This Province, and this Nation, were built by the people who discovered
how to mine and refine ores, to produce the metals and build the machines
that were emplyed by the loggers.  Foresters learned to convert timber to
lumber and build houses and hospitals, and factories.  These factories
produced the goods at reduced cost that freed up resources that could be
put to use improving other areas of our lives.

Today, we are paying farmers not to farm, we are paying mining companies
not to mine, and we are paying foresters not to produce lumber.  Who is
paying?  The people who are still producing and the people who are lending
what they have saved are.

Some day our credit will run out.  


You ask about the difference between agriculture and forestry.  In both
fields, man is employing knowledge in shaping the environment to serve his
desires.  I believe some difference in perception of value is due to
history and some to visibility.  Food production has been the limiting
factor in population for much of history, leading to the greater
perception of its value.  Farming has also been much more
visible than forestry and the value thus much more obvious.  Farming also
has time on it's side; most agriculture cycles from harvest to harvest, or
disturbance to disturbance, on a yearly cycle.  Forestry cycles are 75-150
years, and the change from undisturbed to disturbed less obvious.

I believe that the scientific arguments surrounding the selective logging
vs. clearcutting debate receive less attention because of the visibility
issue.  Minds have slammed shut around the concept that anything on such a
scale directed by man must be evil and functionally destructive.  I
acknowlege that there are many good, strong scientific arguments around
clearcutting issues that deserve attention, however in general the concept
is held to be inappropriate mainly because of an emotional reaction. 
Clearcutting really symbolizes the man influencing the environment theme
because of its scale.  If we were to selecively log, it is argued, we
would be influencing our environment less and this would be better.  The
issue as to whether clearcutting is a negative influence is passed over.

Hamish Kimmins once said that if foresters didn't do a better job of
getting their message out the management of forests would be shifted from
foresters to sociologists or geographers.  I believe the issue at stake is
greater than this.  If people don't begin to appreciate their roots, the
root of the prosperity that they take for granted, and accept the rational
evaluation of issues rather than the emotional, our credit will run out and
the fears that people harbor will come to life.





>
>--
> Steven K. Besler       <besler@gdss.commerce.ubc.ca> (NeXTmail)
> UBC 3.5th yr CS Coop Student &  NeXTSTEP Application Developer   
>
>"Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me.
> Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful . . . 
> that's what matters to me."     Steven P. Jobs CEO of NeXT, Inc.


-- 
Robert Froese  VE7MOQ
taganov biogeocoenose approach                  "Clearcutting is not a Crime"
taganov@unixg.ubc.ca