Hey Del! We agree on something! Kinda. Let's put a plan on the table re. management of old growth forests in this country and throughout the world. If there are 400 trees that peak out at 400 yrs of age, we get to whack one a year.
Fair enough?
I am not being sarcastic about this.
However, the public can't value them as precious on one hand and expect to pay particle board prices to ransom them on the other.
So far, as stated, this is in the realm of "doable." Problem is, it'll never go because "environmentalists" with other interests will never let it go without attaching every imaginable caveat.
IMO, you don't have to look far to find absolute insanity in this realm. Couple of examples.
1. On federal property, certain materials were disposed of as normal by prevailing standards over the years. Many years later, the E police come along and find disbursement of certain substances in adjacent groundwater.
The substance, at observed concentrations was "speculated" to "potentially" cause an additional case of cancer every 100 years or so. My recollection is that several dozen low value residences on well water in the area were subject to exposure to this hazard.
The solution?
Extend piped water to all at cost of less than a million? No.
Compensate the owners for their property and relocate them to better property in any area convenient to them at a cost of perhaps 4-5 million. No.
Well, how about making it a Superfund site and slapping a $ billion + price on the project. BINGO!
And, when all's said and done, will the area be suitable for residential development. No.
2. In the late 70s when the Carter Administration was ga-ga over the idea of mobile and concealable MX missiles, my colleagues managed a project that resulted in two large aerospace companies demonstrating their abilities to move a missile underground and have it "break-out" anywhere along the track and go zoom.
Without going into detail, I'm sure you can imagine that large sums of money were involved. The amount of "environmental" dollars spent in this effort were on par with the actual construction, test and evaluation.
Naturally, there were meetings with every sort of concerned citizen and environmental and political ax grinder. Naturally, there was the free govt. money for academics who did the studies and wrote the reports. Then there was the money spent to mitigate effects.
The bottom line -- the federal govt. had to make an unbelievably detailed record of the land prior to "use", and restore it to its exact original condition.
The kicker was that the few hundred acres were, and had been for many years, a part of the Luke Air Force Base bombing range. It was still active in that capacity, but, because our use was a "new" use we had to go through the wringer and pay out the bucks. $500 toilet seats are a screaming buy by comparison.
It's easy to get me going on this. Del, I'm with you on saving mature redwoods and tropical hardwoods. If you need to save every class of bug to reach an agreement, you will lose me.
Way past my bedtime. Will reiterate in more intelligible terms tomorrow if needed.
Mike |
