[at-l] Drilling & trees, etc...

[sloetoe@yahoo.com (Sloetoe)]

--- "t." <tjfort@netdoor.com> wrote:
> trees are renewable; along with everything else on this planet.  the
trees will be here.  the land. the air. the water.   LONG after the human
race is gone.  no matter what we do, nor, how we misuse the planet

### I hafta disagree with this as a generalized statement; though not as a
philosophy. As a philosophy, *all* of what we enjoy as east coast forest
was essentially logged out and logged over before the lumber industry
moved westward a century ago. Some areas, and *especially* much of the
terrain that the AT traverses, were logged over in colonial days. And
given some small degree of stewardship, this will happen again. It may not
be pretty, but cost *effective* harvesting of the forests gave us most of
the building we type in right now.

What has come back with regeneration, though, is *not* what was harvested.
Whole species of forest denizen -- from plant to animal to smallest
microbe -- are gone. "Extinction" of whole rafts of species barely
documented is *common*. And the results will be felt (if unwittingly)
forever. 

And this continues to happen in front of us. The ecological 'disturbance'
of Dutch Elm Disease is usually thought of in urban/suburban terms, but
could other symbiant organisms have crowded out the fungus, were it not
for the decimated, isolated populations left over from the early logging?
The AT through the Smokys is witness to the final throws of another
ecological disaster, attributed to stress caused by 1) acid deposition, 2)
wooly adelgig(sp?), or 3) both. Were other less hostile species of bug
lost in early clearcutting? Were predator species that kept the adelgig in
check lost? 50 years ago, if you had suggested that fishing would be an
unworkable industry out of The Grand Banks off New England/Nova Scotia,
you would have be laughed at to your face. No laughing matter now, this
renewable resource is about gone, and the industry a starving shadow of
what it was.

The point is this: "renewable" means "able to renew" -- it does *not* mean
"guaranteed to renew." Thousands of years ago, the Meditereanian was
sailed by ships made from lumber harvested in the great forests of
Lebanon. (The *what*? you say?) Bioanthropologists believe that the
mysterious die-off (10,000 years ago) of large mammals in North America
(such as the woolly mammoth, sabre-toothed lion, and dire wolf) was the
fault of mass killings by Native Americans. And they were working
*without* the horse (introduced to North America by the Spanish 500 years
ago). The inhabitants of grassy Easter Island have gone without lumber for
hundreds of years because, armed with nothing more than stone-age
technology, they wiped out their entire stock of Royal palm that covered
the islands when they arrived. The so-called "Cradle of Civilization" --
the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates in what is now Iraq -- barely
support agriculture in 2001 -- they were made barren by a "renewable
resource" activity if ever there was one. Finally, here in the beginnings
of prairie country, it is quite common to roll along the highway and see a
1-3' drop between farm field borders (like road cuts, cemetaries, tree
'islands') and the current farm field. The devastating (and *ongoing*)
loss of prairie topsoil to runoff and dust-laden winds will give us a
ferocious harvest of food *importing* that will bankrupt our country (in
*our* lifetimes).

Bleak, eh?
Renewable does NOT mean inexhaustable. Solar power is an inexhaustable
resource. As is wind power. And tidal power. (Solar derivatives, to be
sure.) Fish, forests, etc, are not inexhaustable, and our country and our
decision makers need to know the difference without question or
qualification.

Sustainably yours, 
Sloetoe


=====
There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of the great and generous emotions of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder.

T.Roosevelt 4/23/10

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