Logic Bomb or Bombed Logic?
Link to Part 1: The Green Way; what is conservation today
The Tree Sitters
There are many political stances out there today; most of them are lacking the balance necessary to fulfill this leadership role. Recently in Berkeley, California there was a group of overzealous "conservationists" that where sleeping in a small grove of redwood trees on the campus of University of California, Berkeley.
The University wanted to cut down the trees that they had planted in the 1920's in order to build a new athletic facility. They have made plans to replant a substantially larger amount of trees in a different location, but this is not an option for these protesters. After 21 months of court injunctions, lawsuits and tree "sitting", the school finally won their lawsuit and began cutting the trees down.
The question that the protesters refuse to ask themselves is, does having those trees cut down benefit the larger population more than keeping them?
In this case the new athletic facility will help produce better athletes, in turn creating more entertainment, making more money for the school and the local merchants, allowing more student athletes to get scholarships and an education that they could not afford at a school that actively advocates ecological education and conservation.
This political stance was not about the general welfare of the people or nature. It was for the welfare of the few kids that slept in the trees for 21 months while being fed by the school. It was a corruption of sorts and made true conservationists look bad.
This small grove of landscaped trees was not worth the amount of effort to save them when the school was planning to plant more trees than it was cutting down. There are entire rainforests that need advocates with this kind of energy, doing a real job.
The Bark Beetle
Throughout the southwest of the United States places like Arizona, California, New Mexico Utah and Canada as well the Bark Beetle, more specifically the Pine Beetle has been creating havoc, killing trees that are weakened from drought and or over population.
Believing that tree thinning is destroying the forests advocate groups have filed lawsuits putting the forest services in the awkward position of having to fight for the right to do there job.
As it stands most forests in North America are over populated making the existing ground water insufficient for keeping these trees healthy enough to fend off these Pine Beetles. The weak, over populated trees in combination with dying and diseased trees are becoming overrun with these beetles. These dead and dying trees become kindling for forest fires.
The Canadian Forest Service has studied the relationship between the carbon cycle and forest fires, logging and tree deaths, concluding that by 2020 the pine beetle outbreak will have released 270 megaton's of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in Canada alone.
Drill Here, Drill Now
At the center of the Presedential race is a conservation issue concerning drilling for oil on United States land. Many people who see themselves as conservationist see this issue as just another way of fleecing the land and destroying our planet. Others see it as a neccessary path that the United States has to traverse in order to rid itself of forigen oil and create jobs in the country.
The truth of the matter is that technology has progressed to the point that the amount of invasive prosedures that nned to be done in order for companies to mine this oil has been cut to a minimum. The impact on the environment (not including the burning of the oil) is at a minimum. There is natural gas out there that burns clean that is frozen in a buracratic limbo.
On the other side of the coin is the fact that all of humanity is in desperate need of finding a clean fuel sorce that is as none invasive to our ecology as possiable.
Both sides agree that solar, wind and water energy sorces need to be improved and implamented, but to what degree is still being fought over. As it stands a large percent of us who use these resorces are being left out of the decision making process and we are tired of it.
America is beginning to ask questions and we must not stop until our leadership comes up with a solution that is acceptable to both sides.
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