On Monday, May 05, 1997 1:26 AM B. Diamond wrote: > I've built several buildings from metal studs, and after a small adjustment period > (I hated them at first) I actually like building with metal studs better. Now before > you go ranting and raving about "mining the earth for steel," I'd just point out that > we are currently only recycling about 40% of the steel we manufacture, and the > lion's share of that get exported. You are certainly persistent. I would not rant about "mining the earth". There is enough iron in the earth's crust to last into the foreseeable future. The real problem is not the material, it is the energy required to make it. All those "non-wood" steel studs you have grown to love require much more energy to produce than wood and therefore result in increased CO2 emissions (climate change), or nuclear waste, or valleys flooded (biodiversity). I hope you enjoy feeling responsible for these environmentally destructive impacts of your work. >How many people do you think > would have a redwood deck built for their home if they had to cut down the 1,200 > year old tree themselves? Not many 1200 year old redwoods are being cut down today. Most redwood harvest is in second growth. Most of the public land that does contain old growth redwood has been protected. There is a controversy over private old growth in the Headwaters in California. The problem here is that people want it preserved but are unwilling to pay fair market value even though they say it is priceless. > Methinks you could use an anthropology class or two. The greatest civilizations in > the history of the world used wood sparingly in the construction of their great > cities--some by choice, others by neccessity. This is not true. Its just that the wooden structures have decomposed and all that is left of "the greatest civilizations" are the stone bits. The Babylonians, Etruscans, Chinese, Greeks, Romans, etc. etc. all used vast amounts of wood and it was there main building material. No different than today, their main downtown structures were made of harder stuff. Read "A Forest Journey - The Role of Wood in the Development of Civilization" by John Perlin, Harvard U. Press, 1989. >My organization, "Citizens for Sustainable Forestry," is intent on > ensuring that we balance our need for wood products with our need for a healthy > environment. What is so unhealthy about thriving second growth native forest? That is what is growing on the vast majority of land that has been logged here in the Pacific Northwest, especially in the National Forests where it is not permitted to convert the land to agriculture or towns. > Really? In your last post you seemd to long for "the good ole days" when you were > getting 9 billion bf off of the PNW forests. How much wilderness and roadless > areas do you think we'd have left in, say, ten years if we had continued to log at > those levels? The issue is not so much the volume of timber as it is the area of land where timber harvest is allowed. Of course there should be sustainable yield practiced but if the National Forests are off-limits to logging the sustainable yield is Zero. Considering that large areas are already designated as National Parks and Wilderness areas, perhaps it would be reasonable to designate 25% of the National Forest land as Wilderness with no harvest and have the other 75% as multiple (integrated) use with timber harvest. As it is even large areas of second growth forest are now locked up due to lawsuits, owls, etc. Once again it seems that your "Citizens for Sustainable Forestry" should really be called "Citizens for No Forestry". > I notice that you chose not to answer my question as to how many old-growth > trees "forest science" had managed to create so far. Why is that? Also, I'm > wondering if you could tell us a little about your organization, "Greenspirit." > where do you get your funding from? I suppose you are "anti-science" as well as "anti-forestry"? Science doesn't "create" trees. The fact is all you have to do is let them grow and hope that they don't burn or die from disease and they will become "old growth" all by themselves. Greenspirit is an environmental consultancy focusing on the primary resource sector, environmental policy, and public participation in decision-making. It gets its income from clients, many of whom are beset by irrational, anti-science, anti-corporate, (and, in fact anti-environmental in the long run) types like yourself. Remember "Wood is the most renewable of all the material used by our civilization and the forest industry is the most sustainable of all the primary industries. Deforestation is not caused by greedy corporate overlords in multinational forest company offices, it is caused by friendly farmers growing our food and by nice carpenters building our houses. It is the permanent removal of the forest and the conversion of the land to another use such as farming and settlement that results in deforestation. Forestry is about renewing the forest and in the Pacific Northwest that means with native species. To the best of our scientific knowledge, no species has become extinct due to forestry in the Pacific Northwest of North America." Patrick Moore, Greenspirit 4068 West 32nd Avenue Vancouver, BC, CANADA V6S 1Z6 e-mail pmoore@mail.bc.rogers.wave.ca 604-221-1990 ph. 604-221-1990 fax May the Forest be With You http://www.forest.org
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