David, I love it. Alegories are a wonderful way to talk about difficult and value laden issues. I think that the islands we all live in are pursueing a path that seeks to use the forests of other islands. In our market economies, someone is making a lot of coconuts on islands B and C by selling firewood to island A. For a commodity as important as firewood in this scenario, I think that the market economy will place preasure on converting the preserves on B and C long before it becomes necessary if husbanding resources was the primary criteria rather than profit. So, in the US the National Park system is under presure to allow mining (our scarce resource--but if the only source of Taxol is Pacific yew in Olympic NP, I will predict that they are harvested if Taxol is as much a wonder drug as the claims say). Like many alegories, maybe this one is trying to force attention on the wrong solution -- population control is what is needed or cold meals. If the 'wild' forest is the source of local spiritualality, then maybe sacrificing half of it as an acknowledged holding action that significantly degrades the quality of life was a poor decision.
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