From: Chris Hind (chind@juno.com)
Date: Mon Sep 16 1996 - 02:32:26 MDT
>I'd rather pay 10% more for recycled paper than to cut down 1000 year
>old trees to pulp more cheaply. If that makes me enemies on this list
>(as it did in this lists's early days), so be it.
On this instance I agree with him because I consider natural environments
asthetically invaluable. There are many things in which humans haven't
discovered or conquored yet and to see the engineering of the laws of
physics and spontaneous orders in living animated examples is much better
information quantity and quality than something generalized averaged and
slapped in a book. Nature is a far better engineer than any of us. Nature
engineers more complex and exotic stuff although much slower. We engineer
quickly but bulky and we will eventually completely surpass nature's
engineering strengths but not now. The reason nature is a greater engineer
is because it looks at a problem in infinite directions. Human engineers
look to accomplish a certain task with a few variables but nature looks at
infinite variables. This doesn't mean I think environmentalism should be
taken to it's extreme where an entire project must be stopped for a single
animal such as the snail darter. If the snail darter was the only reason to
stop the project, they should simply move it to another similar habitat.
Again I must say...Arcologies! Either that or make a molecular map of the
Earth by having nanites race through the planet and reporting back data.
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