Protect the last of the wild

One of the best examples I can give, though I have many, is this: my grandfather was a logger and firefighter in this forest in the 70s. During my lifetime though, the PhD environmentalists came to dominate the forest service, and as logging waned they stopped listening to the old timers about how to take care of the forest. My grandfather would try to tell them they needed to let loggers thin the forest out, and to do more control burns and let them burn longer.

As a kid I dismissed his ramblings, thinking; "they have PhDs! they know better than us!"... and then after I left home, after the pine beetle infestation, poof: two fires within a few years of each other that burned over 500,000 acres of that national forest I grew up in... and it is still recovering to this day, and doesnt look the same. Old trails I used to walk dont exist anymore. Mud slides from the fire have covered up old fishing spots. Etc.

City slickers love to wax poetic about the forest, and then show up and destroy it, and want to send in their environmentalists to fix it their way, while those of us who live in those forests are greater stewards than they ever have been. Then after the forest service or BLM phds have fucked things up, they get sent off to some other poor areas forest, where they arent native and dont listen to the natives.

Another example for this thread: many are claiming cattle ruin forest. on the contrary, cattle have become an important part of keeping the forest healthy, including ranchers taking care of forest land the forest service doesnt have the resources to fix...

Just thought some people might want to hear a slightly different perspective on this issue. Now of course Im talking about smaller localized forests compared to the giant ecosystems the article covers, but I think those microcosms should serve as a warning for anyone wanting to tackle those larger ecosystems in a similar manner. Namely, listen to locals who know the forest better than you do.

They shouldn't just stop drilling. It is a moneymaker for the country and gives the government lots of money to spend on policies which reduce the country's emissions. Norway produces lots of oil relative to the country's size so if they took it off the market, it would just come from somewhere with less standards and less commitment to the environment. They should make calculated moves which don't risk the country's economic future. Taking the biggest sovereign wealth fund in the world's money out of FF stocks is a good way to start, and doesn't jeopardize much, if anything.

Green's only purpose should be to change the dialogue, not to be given any legislative power whatsoever. They will make drastic moves which will yield economic consequences felt by the public. Reality is, people have to be in good economic circumstances to care about altruistic goals like curtailing climate change. Take those good economic circumstances away from them - and suddenly the environment is no longer much of a priority.

> Taking the biggest sovereign wealth fund in the world's money out of FF stocks is a good way to start, and doesn't jeopardize much, if anything.

This is also what i mean by hard choices. In this case it wasn't really that hard.

As a species we are evolving, as an individual you are not. You can argue that humans might become herbivores in the next few 10,000 years, but don't expect to see it in your lifetime.

I also would argue that the individuals who are trying to consciously work against where we've evolved from will face some negative effects, even if their intentions are good.

> the two incisors do not have to determine anyone's diet.

We actually have 4 incisors and 4 canines, for a total of 25% of our teeth. In general teeth are a good indication of what a species eats, since the teeth and the rest of the organism evolved together. Teeth are also a fantastic indicator of the health of the individual, anthropologists use the rate of cavities to tell how healthy the individual and society was.

Coincidentally, vegetarians have a higher rate of cavities than the population at large.

> Now if you don't want to be be a vegetarian fine but don't tell me it's impossible because that's just not true.

I would kindly appreciate you not making up what I'm arguing and putting words into my mouth. I'm not saying humans are obligate carnivores, I'm saying they're omnivores. That means that we can survive off plants, I just think it's a bad idea.

>The PhD environmentalists came to dominate the forest service

What forest exactly? Because this reads like a really bad forwarded email.

Most BLM "PhD's" are from the area they're protecting. They don't shift them around all over the country. Like, I'm not even sure what lead you to think that.

Your arrogance is not as good as someone else's knowledge. And that's all your post really gets at. "I've lived here my entire life, so clearly without devoting any actual effort to studying the ecosystem I know what's best because hey, the trees look pretty good to me!"