And you support our prez? His idea of a "healthy forest" is one with no trees, and to subsidize clearing of underbrush with old growth trees.
It really sucks when you hike 5 miles into the backcountry up by Mt. jefferson or anywhere in the cascades, and your greated with the fabulous sight of a massive clear cut.
This practice of wiping a section of forest off the map at a time has to be stopped.

Yes, we need to stop harvesting our own forests so that we instead import wood from wiped-out forests in 3rd-world countries. Borneo doesn't need its tropical forests anyway. Only thousands of undiscovered species using it.

If people could just do without shelter...

[/sarcasm]

I just got done taking a GIS course at the University of Minnesota where the professor shared with the class that he had done work for British Columbia prior to coming to the UofM to teach. He once created maps for BC outlining areas to be clear-cutted by analysing topography and making sure that areas clear-cutted were not in tourists or hikers line of sight. Hike off the trail and climb over the ridge and you'd find all sorts of clear-cut wasteland.

[sarcasm]Surely, if Canada clear-cuts, it can't be bad, right?[/sarcasm]

;)

As I understand it, some species of trees require clear cuts to grow well. For those species, it is not just the most convenient way to log, it is the healthiest way to grow new forests. But you may want to check with a forestry expert on this point.

Maybe it is because I grew up on a farm, but I don't share the common dislike of clear cuts (or open pit mining, which draws similar objections). In fact, I see the dislike of clear cuts and open pit mining -- for themselves -- as green superstition. Sometimes the practices are destructive; sometimes they are the best solutions.

I am very much in favor of improving our environment -- and think that "environmental" organizations such as the Sierra Club are often the biggest obstacles to doing so. I'll have more to say about this at my site, when I finish my much delayed "Green Republicans" post in January.

Where Marty works may be ugly -- in my opinion -- but I would not ban it even so.

In the Phillipines there was a big recent mudslide, because of illegal deforestation/ logging. With anti-gov't insurgents, and gov't police, and the mass of poor people, all conspiring to get some of the money from clear cutting.

The utter, total, dispicable failure of the Left to bring sustainable development to poor people has given this, and similar, result. Sustainable development means companies making profit. Non-profitable companies are NOT sustainable.

The silly "aid (for local dictators)" paradigms have far more often been counter productive, rewarding powerful exploiters rather than the poor and needy.

And then there's the lousy rich country trade barriers.

In National Review's The Corner, they call them "Cruncy-Cons".

For a simpler and more direct view of what Crighton is trying to say on the topic of environmentalism go here:

http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/index.html

and select "Remarks to the Commonwealth Club - September 15, 2003".

He is also quoted by Wretchard at BelmontClub.com.

What I understand Crighton to be objecting to is the politicization and near religiousness of much of the current environmental movement, particularly the absence of real, peer reviewed science to support the movement's positions.

"For Crichton, the novel is politics by other means."

Funny how this never seems to be a problem as long as the politics measure up to PC standards.

Belmont Club is actually here:

http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/

apologies for the misdirection.

Marty, it's perfectly possible to support the President on some issues but not others. I grew up in a logging town in Oregon and I can't stand clear cuts or pit mining. One of the biggest disconnects I have with midwest, southern, and east coast conservatives is their attitude towards the environment. (But, one of the biggest disagreements I have with pretty much all non-westerners is the idea that land use decisions are best made in Washington, D.C.)

Jim, I am no big fan of environmental organizations, but I'm also, like I said, no fan of clear cuts and pit mines. They're ugly and even if clear cuts are healthy for trees (which I'm very skeptical about, especially considering how well forests survived without them), the runoff is a horrible problem. Then there's the mudslides.

Gregg Easterbrook of the New Republic once wrote that environment had improved under GWB but no credit was or would be given because of hostile press and hostile "activists" who will hate him no matter what.

We are stewards of the Land. Even Mr. Bush uses that term... loosly.

It's ok to cut trees, if you can replace them with more trees. It's ok to strip mine, if you reclaim the land when you're done. It's all about personal responsibility.

Of course, if we were truly responsible people, who were good stewards of the land, we would choose the best crop for our needs. While trees are the only source of wood, they are not the only, nor best source for paper pulp, ethanol or many of the other areas wood is used for. Indeed, Indian Hemp (non-psychedelic) produces 5 times the ammount of fiberous material for paper and ethanol production, on the same plot of land, in 4 months (instead of four years).

My grandfather was an environmentalist his entire life. He grew up in and lived most of his life in Washington (St). He loved the forest (as I do) and he spent a lot of time in them. He once told me that when he was young he hated clear cuts, they made the land look ugly (And they are freaken ugly) and he felt the trees would not grow back. But some 40 years later he looked at the areas that had been clear cut and they had grown back into health forests. He told me that he was ok with some clear cutting, at least up in Washington. I doubt he would have supported it on a large scale, but no lasting harm has been done to Washington due to it.

Personally I believe the solution to over fishing, over logging, ivory poaching; ect is to create farms for each of these activities. Humans originally created farms because we would use up all the resources in an area and we would have to move on every so often. Farms create stability in supply and allow us to expand the total supply. This solution could solve many of the world’s conservation problems and create better lives for us all.

Derek,

Well said.

MJT: I live in Oregon and really don't like clear-cutting.

You damned dirty hippies. Where else can they clear-cut? Arizona?

So I go into Iowa and I see corn shorn after the harvest. Clearcuts! But that's OK, because corn is just a crop.

And I drive down a road in Weyerhaeuser tree farms, and I see hillsides shorn of trees. Clearcuts! And that's bad, even though the trees are just a crop, they're a crop where Bambi lives.

I guess it's something mystical about trees. We don't mind turning Iowa into farmland, but it's very bad to turn Washington State into farmland.

I guess that's the argument.

Remember Brooks' Law: Whenever you see the word "neocon" in a sentence written by a liberal, you can assume that the rest of the sentence is untrue. That said, I suppose the recognition that there are non-Jewish neocons (me for one) out there represents progress of a sort.

About forestry in America.

It is a fact that the vast majority of locally harvested trees come from private land. Almost always this land is owned by the Timber companies themselves.

About forestry on Federal land, clear-cutting has been limited everywhere except South Dakota (thank you Tom Daschle). I just had a vacation in the Black Hills this September and witnessed the clear-cutting going on in the Black Hills. I admit, it is ugly. But no uglier than forest fires, which recently consumed vast portions of the southern Black Hills, which I also saw. The area around the Jewel Caves National Monument is all torched. And it is this phenomenon that clear-cutting happens to mimic that allows for certain tree species to grow where overgrown "old growth" forests prevent. Forest fires and clear-cutting are ugly as hell, but forest fires are a natural process that renews the forest ecology. Occassional clear-cutting duplicates this.

Forest fires also cause erosion equal to clear-cutting. Old growth forests exist as we know them today because of modern forest fire prevention. It is not unreasonable to say that old growth forests are a man-made phenomenon. In fact, when an old growth forest goes up in flames, the fire is more intense because of the over-grown underbrush, often wiping out the species of plants that require occassional fires to renew the forest, because the intense heat of these fires incinerates those hardy plants.

This is not to say that we need more clear-cutting. But it is to say that targeted clear-cutting is a wise policy. In fact we need tree harvesting and underbrush clearing where fires are a part of the natural forest ecology. There are forest husbandry techniques that allow for tree spot-harvesting, selecting trees here and there, leaving others behind to continue maturing, that is probably the best option to clear-cutting where there is opposition to it.

Oh, a last point, clear-cutting on a mountain side is vastly more ugly than clear-cutting on a plain. Which may account for a midwestern-vs.-western difference in opinion.

MIKLOS...

Yeah, and Easterbrook was right. But I don't think the environment improved under George Bush because of George Bush, though. I think it improved, none the less. Still, the larger point is a valid one. Bush hasn't been nearly as bad on environmental issues as most people seem to claim. Environmental issues get demagogued like crazy because Dems know they have public opinion on their side. The Republicans do the same thing on taxes. My point is that, simply, Bush hasn't been any worse than any other Republican would have been. He didn't push for a hike in CAFE standards or anything super-awesome like that, but no Republican ever would.

Clear cut forests make great gun ranges. My boyfriend and I are planning to have our wedding ceremony in the midst of a clear cut and exchange matching Walther PPKs as well as rings.

Nathan - So, if I think the place you work is ugly, I should work to get it banned? (And I might think it is. I dislike most of the new houses here in Kirkland (WA), and many of the new office buildings.)

And I threw in the open pit mines for a reason. Everything else being equal, they are far safer for miners than underground mines. Those who want to ban them are saying, in effect: I don't like to look at them, so more miners should get injured and die.

Please feel free to email me a picture of where you work -- as long as the file is small. I'll be happy to tell you whether it offends me more or less than clear cuts.

As for environmental organzations, they have become -- and this is the nicest way I can put it -- exceptionally irresponsible in their charges. They do so in order to raise money for their enormous staffs and palatial offices.

RE: clear cutting - forests grow back, you know.

I used to work for a forest products company a few years ago and I can tell you firsthand that their policy then was if they did do a clearcut (sometimes they did selective cuts), they would replant four trees for every one they cut.

The scourge of clearcutting and the evil of timber companies has been largely exaggerated.

Selective harvest of trees produces a result worse than clear-cutting: a stagnant, lifeless "forest" of misshapen trees. Clear-cutting lets the sun reach the ground. A clear-cut forest can bounce back in a few decades (old growth excepted, of course). A selectively harvested plot just limps along.

We grow trees on farms now anyway, and get a lot of lumber from small timber. Check out the 2×4's at your home improvement store sometime. They're all straight, thanks to improvements in milling and drying technology, I guess. They also all have bark surfaces on one or two corners. They come from trees less than six inches in diameter; I saw a huge pile of these sticks in a millyard in Idaho the day before yesterday. I can't remember the last time I saw a really big log on a truck.

Clear-cutting isn't what it used to be. But perhaps I deserve to be irritated.

Dipnut,

You weren't who I had in mind when I said "people who deserve to be irritated." Did you follow my link? I meant people who throw the word "neocon" around without having even a molecule of understanding of what that word means.

Ok, let me get this straight; because I share the "Neo-con" world view, and at the same time support environmentalist efforts and personally get upset when I see a beautiful tree cut down, this qualifies me as a "Neo-con Treehugger"? Wow. I got one that'll blow your mind: Islamo-fascists should be hunted and killed like former SS-officers, and I'm not convinced that trees don't have a soul. How'm I doin'?

Some of you boys are stuck in the middle of that big fog of war, cept this is the environment we're talking about. Making a forest healthy doesn't mean killing trees. Death = healthy? Come on out of your rose-colored rabbit-holes before 1000 year old redwoods get wiped out of Sequoia.

How can you compare it to corn? That's a reach! Trees fight pollution and give us oxygen, dickheads!

I think I'd understand "neocon" better if a "neolib" would just define it for me. So far, "neocon" seems to be a pretty big lasso.

mondo,

Corn guves us oxygen as well... in fact all green plants give us oxygen.