From: Brian D Williams (talon57@well.com)
Date: Fri May 14 1999 - 07:48:40 MDT
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From: "Billy Brown" <bbrown@conemsco.com>
>So which is the problem - the fact that McDonald's will buy cheap
>beef, or the fact that the Brazilians are willing to clear-cut
>their rain forest to raise cattle? I'd say the latter.
The fact that poor people will do whatever they have to is the
problem.
>> Mature maybe, old growth... no way. They log on so-called nature
>> preserves all the time..
>I know - one more example of how well socialist solutions work.
>:-)
We agree on this.
>But it only matters for a tiny fraction of the ecology. We've got
>lots of 30-60 year old timber, which is plenty old enough to form
>a habitat for virtually the entire ecosystem. It would be nice if
>we could also save that last 1% that needs an authentic old-growth
>forest, but that isn't in the same league as the major problems in
>other parts of the world.
A monocultural block of trees is not a forest, and to be fair under
your definition, South America should be free to destroy all but 1%
of the rainforest.
>Well, what exactly do you mean by "environmentally sound".
>Pollution levels are falling, conservation efforts are growing,
>and every reasonable effort is being made to avoid causing damage
>(along with a lot of unreasonable efforts). I don't see that it
>would make sense to do more. It makes more sense to devote our
>limited financial resources to developing advanced technology
>(which could free us from many of the tradeoffs we currently
>face) than to spend even more money trying to preserve a tiny
>fraction of the ecosphere that happens to be very vulnerable to
>perturbations.
I agree things are better than they were, but we are a long way
from being in balance with our ecosystem. We agree that the answer
is more/better technology rather than less. The Bioneers are a good
example.
I'm saying that having had our way with our ecosystem and arguing
over doing in the last 1%, we're in no position to tell other
people what they should be doing.
Lead by example.
Brian
Member, Extropy Institute
www.extropy.org
Member, Life Extension Foundation
www.lef.org
Current reading: Cryptonomicon (page 696 of 900) by Neal Stephenson
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