🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <243siu$1c1@skeena.ucs.ubc.ca> taganov@unixg.ubc.ca (Robert Edgar Froese) writes:
>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.

  Well, I might choose to shape it differently than you. 
  I might choose not to shape it.

>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.

  yes, golly-gee, isn't capitalism and technology wonderfull? 

  I mean, if it weren't for technology we wouldn't have this quandry:

>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. 

  a) your notion that the development of technology has been due to
the feeling that government wasn't going to interfere is unfounded.
Governments have been interfering since the beginning. 
  Telephones would not have become so universal were it not for
regulation, computers would not have become so cheap save for the cold
war, and trees would not have become available were it not for armed
conquest. Maybe I *should* agree with you that government
non-intervention is a good thing, if only we could do it.
  What is a government, really, other than a select bunch of people
who have gotten the "rest of us" to give them political power so they
can shape the environment ("our environment") to suit them?

  b) we paid farmers not to farm in the '20s and '30s as well. Yes, it
certainly does seem daft to me. I keep asking economics friends what
they think about the world of Star-Trek. I mean, if we've got such a
glut of food, why not just make food free?  One of the benefits of
paying taxes, as it were. Sure, it sounds like socialism, but maybe
we'll just have to control people by controlling production of
tooth-picks or lava-lamps. 

  c) You talk briefly about population, and food being a limit on it.
Perhaps you can point out to your Dad that there are a lot more of us
around now. If you take a large finite resonably constant number
(daily input of energy from the Sun. I'll go look it up if you like),
and divide it by number of people in the world, a number that keeps
going up, you have to notice that people are getting less, on average
than before. Practically all human problems are resource distribution
problems. 
  
  d) I'm not really going to argue selective logging vs clearcutting
with you. From other postings, I suspect, this being an area of
particular interest to you, you have many facts at your hands. I will
suggest, and I think you'll agree, that selective logging is more
man-power intensive than is clearcutting. That is, it is more costly.
If it were not, lumber companies wouldn't want to do it.
  Maybe this is why we are paying foresters not to forest?