Slashdot Mirror
World's First Tree-sitting Weblog
An anonymous reader writes "Amit Asaravala over at Wired News has an interesting article up about the tree-sitters in Humboldt County. Apparently a bunch of tech activists from the Indymedia Center are setting the tree-sitters up with an 802.11b network so that they can blog about all the logging going on up there. Seems like a pretty interesting way to use technology to help the environment, which isn't something you see everyday."
As opposed to what? All of the really exciting stuff going on in your parent's basement? Since when have weblogs been interesting? Quite hypocritical for someone who probably plays games all day to rip on someone who is trying to help save the environment.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
They are not as clueless as you are, that's for sure. Chopping down a large part of a forest will destroy the habitat for animals and other species living there, some of which may be very rare.
If you would have read their weblog you would have known more about why they are protesting.
I don't think you can characterize anyone who is pro-environment as anti-technology. Not everyone on /. thinks corporations are the spawn of evil. I do wonder if many people who are pro-environment know all of the pollution that chip manufacturers produce... etc.
However, for all of you who will slam others for their inconsistencies, keep in mind that it is almost impossible to be 100% consistent. Just because someone has decided to choose one area to focus their energies on for some good, and isn't trying to be super(wo)man and fix everything, that should not nullify any truth that is in their message. That should not be pointed out to discredit them, or make you seem smarter. Every bit of good helps.
Right. Nobody's suggesting that *all* economic activity should stop on environmental grounds. What they're protesting is how and where logging happens.
Sure, we need wood and paper, but do we really need to cut down ancient redwood forests containing the tallest trees in the world? If managed correctly, tree farms can produce all the pulp that we need.
Yes I do expect them to renounce all technology, and furniture for that matter ;-)
Most of these people have a hypocritical, short sighted, rose colored view of the world. Instead of sitting in the damn tree maybe they should be negotiating (note not suing) with the logging company to develop their replanting and harvesting strategy. If the protesters were more open minded then maybe they could help loggers take trees out of the forest selectively and leave a variety of ages of trees in an area, plus plant new ones. A consession would probably have to be more low maintenance roads to get into the areas and selectively cut. It baffles me that the choice is either rape the land, or don't touch it. Stewardship of resources is not really discussed or handled, basically because the activists have iron clad belief in not doing anything. It's pretty well proven that when you do that the forest will burn. Of course when you clear cut and then replant trees that are all the same age fire danger can go up as well.
Maybe the solution is actually somewhere in the middle.
So you can't be an environmentalist unless you live in a shack, grow your own food, forgo Western medicine, and don't use any technology that you didn't build yourself? That's absurd. I consider myself an environmentalist. I try to minimize my consumption. I think about purchases. I don't own a car. I try to educate others. But I live in a city, I use technology, and I use fossil fuels. Am I hypocrite?
Listen, it's easy to be a critic, but if you've ever seen with your own eyes what these tree sitters are fighting for, you might change your mind. I've been to some of the clearcuts on Vancouver Island, BC. You wouldn't believe the logging practices that went on before the environmental movement helped put a stop to them. There are entire mountains there that have been clearcut bald, from the summit straight into the valleys. Whole landscapes, brown and full of nothing but broken stumps. Soil washed away so nothing will grow back for a long time. It's gastly. But now, clearcuts like these are banned, and sustainable logging is being practiced more and more widely in BC.
These environmentals aren't against the wholesale use of wood, or oil, or technology - don't be silly. That's a false choice. It's in how we do things. Do we drive around town in Hummers, getting 8 miles per gallon, or do we acknowledge that yeah, there's more to living on this planet than unfettered self-gratification, and learn to make due with a smaller car? Or public transit? It's about rationale choices, man.
It's not all one sided, of course. But the upper management of LP, the ones with the power to change things, are pretty much all hard set against negotiation - they take a very hard line, and use considerable influence with local government (which is largely corrupt) to get thier way.
She also says:
In short, it sounds like negotiation and criminal and civil litigation have already been attempted and have failed. Their demands do not indicate that they want the lumber industry to stop cutting altogether - she lists four things she'd like to see:
I'm not sure I agree with the first "demand" - I'd have to be given better reasoning than just "it's bad" - so I'll leave that one as being perhaps a little overboard. But I dunno.
I'd hope we can all agree that simple clear-cutting is bad and irresponsible. The lumber industry would actually be better off replanting or leaving enough trees so that the forest can grow back. However, MAXXAM/PL is apparently taking an incredibly short-sited view of things and is going for as much profit short-term as possible, instead of attempting to ensure that they will be able to continue with a source of lumber into the future.
As for herbicides, I'd love to know why a logging company would be spraying herbicides. It would seem to increase the damage from any wildfires (as it would cause there to be more deadwood). I would guess they do it to help clear the underbrush to be able to pull trees out easily? Seems unnecessary and quite possible to be worked around. Not being a logger, I don't know.
The last one again should be just common sense. You know what prevents a large sloped mass of dirt from being a large flowing mass of mud? Roots, be they tree roots or other undergrowth. Remove the trees, the roots die, and then you get mudslides in rainy conditions. But anyone engaging in clear-cutting probably doesn't really care about the land after they've finished exploiting it, so they probably feel fine about letting the area turn into a deathtrap once they've got their wood out. At the very least, one would hope that on slopes with the danger of landslides, lumber companies would either be forced to leave most of the trees and immediately replant around the trees they have removed a new tree and probably grass as a stop-gap measure until the tree matures enough to hold the ground in place.
The solution probably is in the middle, but if you actually read the 'blog, it seems that the logging company is intent on maximizing immediate profits with no concern for what will happen as a consequence.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
I love how enviromentalists are willing ignore the rights of the logging companies to have and use their PRIVATE property just so that they protest. Seems to me the right to private property is one of the biggest tenants of liberty, which gives them the opportunity to protest. Protesting is fine until it starts infringing on other people's rights.
And, of course, the fact that the logging that Pacific Lumber Company is ok, since it doesn't hurt anyone else.
It hasn't filled Humboldt Bay with mud, seriously degrading the habitat for fish, and it hasn't seriously damaged the ability of the watershed to filter and buffer rainfall from storms, which made Freshwater Creek less likely to flood.
The fact that residents of Eureka now see a lot more flooding, and the flooding being directly traceable to the logging doesn't matter, does it? The fact that their logging doesn't just affect their private property, but is damaging large amounts of both private and public property isn't important?
I'm sure if you found your PRIVATE PROPERTY was regularly getting flooded and your PRIVATE PROPERTY was being destroyed by the actions of the logging companies, that you'd be a little less likely to say "they're only doing it on their private property, they have that right!"
Massive amounts of logging affect much more than just the land that's logged. So would it be fair to say "Logging is fine until it starts infringing on other people's rights"?? Because that is EXACTLY what this company is doing.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
No, they'd be outcompeted by the guys who don't have the overhead of studying or practicing renewable techniques.
The change has to come from the marketplace or from the government... it's pretty hard to get the marketplace to do anything ethical, and the government is corrupt.
The marketplace won't change for the same reason as industry... only the wealthy can afford to spend ethically, everyone else has to go as cheap as they can.
The government is corrupt IMHO because capitalism broke democracy... through campaign contributions, employing citizens and feeding the taxbase, corporations have too much sway over government.
So how do you fix democracy so that it can take control back from capitalism and focus on what is right for the people? and not for the corporation?
You can't... for the same reason the marketplace and corporations can't change; Changing the government means changing a country and countries must compete on an international scale. Any country to toughen up on its corporations looses domestic jobs and international power.
The only way to recover that power is to build new jobs by slashing down forests, building factory farms etc.
We're all stuck in a rut. Renewable forestry will become popular only when it is either 1. absolutely necessary, or 2. every other country in the world is forced to adopt it due to (1) and the last country to hold out is wealthy enough to choose the ethics they want to practice.