<div>The changes in appearance of Moscow Mountain over recent decades, when viewed from the south looking north, due to logging, are dramatic; and not only lessen the beauty of this mountain from a distance, but when hiking through some areas that were marvelous in the 1970s, now look like a bomb went off... Personally, this is very sad.</div>
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<div>Yes, of course: jobs, profit, development... Children to feed, mortgage and vehicle payment, the college fund and that new big screen monitor; and lumber for new home construction, paper products, etc. And remember, "Wilderness, Land of No Use."</div>
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<div>I'm not sure of the extent of ecosystem damage or resource depletion from logging in Latah County, but the issue of logging must be viewed in its Earth System context, given the magnitude of humanity's expansion over the planet. Latah County no doubt consumes products linked to logging in other nations. If the human population was under one billion, the impacts of logging would be much easier to manage sustainably. But with six billion and counting, if the rate of consumption of forests products per capita in the US were extended just to China and India alone, the ecosystem services from forests, that are critical to maintain the biosphere, would reach a crisis of depletion and ecosystem damage. </div>
<div> </div>
<div>In following our example, China and India alone could devastate the world's forests. Maybe we should, on this issue, as the slogan implores, "Think globally, act locally." Data below on this issue from the Earth Policy Institute: </div>
<div> </div>
<div><a href="http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/2005/Update46.htm">http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/2005/Update46.htm</a></div>
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<div>Here in the US we support via our consumption of goods containing forest products or requiring clearing of forests, the destruction of critical forest ecosystems in other areas of the world. US consumption of beef and soy products (tofu eating may not be as environmentally friendly as some think) is linked to clearing of rain forest in the Amazon, for cattle grazing and soy cultivation. Of course Europe, Japan and other developed nations also have rates of consumption of forest products that are linked to this non sustainable trend. </div>
<div> </div>
<div>Rain forests are cut for palm plantations in Indonesia and Borneo (<a href="http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/february18/biofuels-rainforest-destruction-gibbs-021809.html">http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/february18/biofuels-rainforest-destruction-gibbs-021809.html</a> ), ironically sometimes for biofuels, also for palm oil that is sometimes added to vegetarian food... Vegetarians (tofu) and biofuel users supporting rain forest destruction, absurdities of modern life</div>
<div> </div>
<div>In British scientist James Lovelock's "Revenge of Gaia" (I title I cringe at, because it sounds like a flaky fantasy novel, or a "New Age" screed on naive back to mother nature spiritualism, rather than the science and technology based analysis that it is), he lists the three deadly "c's" one of which is "chainsaws:" "combustion, cattle and chainsaws."</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Below is a provocative (even if misrepresenting Lovelock in some respects), review of this book from the British Journal of Medical Practice, which focused on Lovelock's work in part, I assume, because of his medical metaphors for how we should approach the Earth System. Lovelock's promotion of nuclear power as a partial solution to the energy/climate change crisis is discussed, an issue where Lovelock displays his independence, intelligence and knowledge as an empirical scientist:</div>
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<div><a href="http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1837861">http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1837861</a></div>
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<div>
<div class="fm-copyright"><a class="int-reflink" href="http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/about/copyright.html">Copyright</a> © British Journal of General Practice, 2006.</div>
<div class="fm-title">Book review</div>
<div class="contrib-group fm-author">Reviewed by Lesley Morrison</div>
<div class="fm-footnote"></div>
<div class="fm-supp-title" style="MARGIN-TOP: 1em">James Lovelock <br><span class="product-source">The Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth is Fighting Back — And How We Can Still Save Humanity</span>. <br>Allen Lane. 2006<span> PB, 192 pp, £16.99, </span>0-713-99914-4. </div>
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<div> </div>
<div>
<div class="p p-first" id="id698129">James Lovelock, the renowned scientist who first introduced us to Gaia, the concept of the earth as a self-regulating system, has now written, <em>The revenge of Gaia</em>, in which he describes how, after millennia of humankind exploiting the earth without counting the cost, the earth is fighting back. It makes extremely uncomfortable reading. For those of us who have always strongly, instinctively and rationally felt that on no account must we ever go down the nuclear route to meet our energy needs, it is a particularly difficult read. He says that, to survive, we have no choice.</div>
<div class="p" id="id698140"> </div>
<div class="p">Lovelock writes passionately and well and his language is rich in metaphor, something which, he acknowledges, many scientists find irritating. Gaia behaves like the other mythic goddesses, Khali and Nemesis; she acts as a mother who is nurturing but ruthlessly cruel towards transgressors, even when they are her progeny. Her primary obligation is to the living earth, humankind comes second. She is struggling to keep the earth cool for all her diverse forms of life against the inexorable rise in the sun's heat. At this crisis point neither business as usual or sustainable development are useful policies. They are like expecting a lung cancer victim to be cured by stopping smoking; many of Lovelock's metaphors are medical. ‘Both measures deny the existence of the Earth's disease, the fever brought on by a plague of people’.</div>
<div class="p" id="id698150"> </div>
<div class="p">Many of Lovelock's metaphors are medical. He speaks to us as doctors, and also as spiritual beings … ‘Important concepts like God and Gaia are not comprehensible in the limited space of our conscious minds’. He describes us as tribal carnivores apparently oblivious to the global heating (as opposed to mere warming) which we have caused. He also refers to us as ‘planetary physicians’ who have reneged on the Hippocratic Oath, ‘first do no harm’. The threats of flooding and desertification are real and imminent. Combustion and the accumulation of carbon dioxide are the major hazards to the planet. In general practice we are familiar with many positive ‘c’ words, ‘care’, ‘compassion’, ‘collaboration’ and ‘connection’. Lovelock's ‘c’ words are his ‘three deadly c's’, ‘combustion’, ‘cattle’ and ‘chainsaws’. We should use them all as little as possible.</div>
<div class="p" id="id698161"> </div>
<div class="p">Farmland acts as the skin of the planet and is a precious resource. We have a false sense of our ability to manage it. ‘We are no more capable to be the stewards or developers of the Earth than are goats to be gardeners’. Organic farming is a luxury we cannot afford. We need to make maximum use of the land we have with minimal transport and carbon dioxide production. Synthetically produced food using carbon compounds sequestered from power station effluent is one option. He believes that the Green movement is in denial about the irreversibility of climate change and that many of their policies are positively harmful. Hostility to nuclear power is an example.</div>
<div class="p" id="id698169"> </div>
<div class="p">Lovelock does not see nuclear power as a panacea but as a temporary solution, which we have available now and which is less harmful to the planet than existing alternatives. In the public consciousness cancer and radiation are firmly linked. What tends to be ignored are the cancer-inducing risks of the life-giving gas, oxygen. Thirty per cent of us will develop cancer and a contribution to the process of carcinogenesis is from the fiercely reactive radical products of oxidation which can cause DNA damage and the growth of cancer cells. Oxygen and carbon dioxide, not radiation, are the real and pervasive threats to life. Lovelock has famously offered to have a container of nuclear waste products buried in his garden as a demonstration of their safety. He believes that, until such time that we have developed a combination of clean energy from renewables, fusion (the energy from hydrogen combustion) and burning fossil fuel under conditions where the carbon dioxide effluent is safely sequestered, we are obliged to use nuclear fission energy as a temporary measure. He offers a further medical analogy, that of a haemorrhage being stemmed by a paramedic until the patient reaches hospital.</div>
<div class="p" id="id698182"> </div>
<div class="p">The time has come when all of us must ‘plan a retreat from the unsustainable place where we have reached through the inappropriate use of technology’. Appropriate technological fixes which he describes appear to teeter on the brink of science fiction; large sunshades placed between the earth and the sun, the production of artificial clouds, the use of sulphuric acid aerosols to bounce heat rays away from the earth.</div>
<div class="p p-last" id="id698188"> </div>
<div class="p p-last">But the situation is so dire that all measures need to be considered and all assumptions need to be scientifically challenged. Undoubtedly this book is successful in doing that. Lovelock describes the process by which people have become convinced that ‘anything nuclear is evil’ as cognitive dissonance summed up in the phrase, ‘don't confuse me with facts, my mind is made up’. The over-riding sense I was left with at the end of this book was of the precious beauty of the Earth and the sadness of its plight. And of the responsibility we all share to participate in an informed debate about our country's and our planet's energy future. Next month we are holding a public meeting on nuclear power with our Green MSP, Chris Ballance. With several of us having read this book, the discussion promises to be lively.</div>
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<div>Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett<br> </div>
<div><span class="gmail_quote">On 7/18/09, <b class="gmail_sendername">roger hayes</b> <<a href="mailto:rhayes@turbonet.com">rhayes@turbonet.com</a>> wrote:</span>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">Hello,<br>Traveling north the other day I found I was appalled at the<br>deforestation of our small mountains. All along McCrosky park, clear<br>
cuts denude the land up to the borders of the park. On the east side of<br>Plummer creek valley huge swaths of bare ground look like a war zone. A<br>war against forests...<br>Yesterday, we went out to Little Boulder by Helmer. All the mountains<br>
surrounding the Potlatch valley are newly logged. Not a stick standing.<br>Brown, erodible land showing for miles. Log truck (yes, I know jobs,<br>and I understand that) roared by every few minutes. I looked carefully<br>
at a few loads and the logs looked green and healthy. I saw no borer<br>sap marks.<br>Up by Laird park, if one looks 360 degrees around the valley the<br>mountains are cut clean of timer in huge swaths.<br>Finally, every day on my way home from work, I see that Moscow<br>
mountain, and along the shoulder toward the East and West Twins are<br>becoming gradually cleared of any timber. New logging road are clearly<br>visible as they wind their way up the mountain. From the Chipman<br>Trail, and the Pullman highway, Moscow mountain presents a lovely view<br>
as it stands above our city. Sunsets are particularly beautiful. The<br>slashes up the mountain side detract from that picture, and show that<br>maybe we don't care much about our environment.<br>What happened to selective logging? I see many small landholders<br>
continue this practice, and the results doesn't look half bad.<br>I know that much of the land mentioned above, particularly Moscow<br>mountain, is private land, and I guess people can do what they want<br>with that land. What about Federal and State land? Why do those lands<br>
have to be clear cut? What about erosion? What about our water<br>resources? Don't the mountains surrounding our area supply at least<br>shallow aquifer water? What about our creeks and rivers? Don't they<br>supply water and critical habitat?<br>
Will there be any trees left in Latah county it this keeps up? Kind of<br>sad...<br><br>Roger Hayes<br>Moscow<br><br>=======================================================<br>List services made available by First Step Internet,<br>
serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.<br> <a href="http://www.fsr.net">http://www.fsr.net</a><br> mailto:<a href="mailto:Vision2020@moscow.com">Vision2020@moscow.com</a><br>=======================================================<br>
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