From: pauld@cs.washington.edu (Paul Barton-Davis)
Newsgroups: talk.environment
Subject: Re: Libertarians & the Environment
Date: 21 Jul 92 18:44:09 GMT
Organization: Computer Science & Engineering, U. of Washington, Seattle

In article <92202.221908MEK104@psuvm.psu.edu> MEK104@psuvm.psu.edu writes:
>  > in <1992Jul20.192034.2963@beaver.cs.washington.edu> Paul Barton-Davis
>>Clearcutting is cheap, and productive so long as you don't mind an
>>expected lifetime for the replanted tree farm of only 300-1000 years (based
>>on studies in German forests).  By most business criteria, this is just
>>fine, so there are few business incentives to do anything other than
>>clearcut.

>To the second author, I do not believe that you know as much about forestry
>as you pretend.  

Quite possibly true, although I'm not pretending to know anything
about it, merely echoing stuff I read.
		  
		  If you did, you would realize that clearcutting does not
>"decimate" forests, with the possible exception of tropical rain forests and
>even there the size of the clearcut has a direct berring on forest
>regeneration.  I do not believe that German tree farms are managed on 300 to
>1000 year rotations.  

That was not the claim. The claim is that apparently benign management
techniques have a long term deleterious effect on the forests, such
that after 300-1000 years, there is a marked decline in their productivity.
The forests that these studies were done in were once not managed on
rotations at all, at least not in the conventional sense of the 

		       What species do the Germans use in their tree farms
>that live to 1000 years?  Of the native species, European forests are
>primarily black pine, Norway spruce and European larch, I do not believe
>that these species typically live to 1000 years of age.  

As explained above, this is irrelevant. You also seem to miss out the
non-coniferous forests that once covered England, for instance, and
are/were composed mostly of oak, beech and elm.
							  
							  I would be most
>interested in seeing the studies you cite, and the species involved.
0
I will endeavour to track these down for both you & Tim Freeman. I
really should start to keep notes on where I read stuff like this -
knowing my luck, it will turn out to be "Sierra" and my credibility
will be blown :-)
								       In any
>case, when you draw parallels between European forests and those of North
>America, are you referring to [ ... list of N. American forest
>archetypes elided ... ] Do you really think that
>the same standards apply to each of these diverse ecosystems?  

Not at all. My point was merely that there seems to be evidence of
problems with a *particular* forest and a *particular* management
regime, even though historically (as in 500 years or more) this regime
has been thought of as sustainable over unlimited time periods. I have
no idea if this would be a problem with other forest archetypes, but
it seems to me that we should be thinking about it.

>                                            You can't simply make the kind
>of sweeping generalizations that environmentalists are so prone to do.

I *try* not to.

>>>6.  The forest is useful to itself because it has a right to exist, since
>>>trees are people too.  Unfortunately for your friend, Libertarians only give
>>>rights to real people, not trees.  In this case, your friend should probably
>>>look into joining Earth First!.
>
>>Why the caricature ? What aspect of deep ecology ("biocentrism") prevents
>>you from recognising the idea that trees deserve rights as trees, not as
>>people ?
>
>What can I say about this ...  I think it belongs on talk.bizarre.  
   [ ... more caricature elided ... ]

It seems you lack much understanding of what the term "rights" covers. 

-- paul
-- 
		     Paul's housebuilding credo:
     Measure it with a micrometer, cut it with a chainsaw, fit it
			 with a sledgehammer
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