# Goddamnit, you idiots. Can't you leave ONE piece of pristine forest alone?! **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [March 13, 2009, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goddamnit-you-idiots-cant-you-leave-one-piece-of-pristine-forest-alone/489365 "2009-03-13T21:05:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![curlcoat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ea5d25/32.png) [@curlcoat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/curlcoat)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goddamnit-you-idiots-cant-you-leave-one-piece-of-pristine-forest-alone/489365/61 "2009-03-14T06:08:28Z")
> [@Ogre](#): > > My house is 55 years old, and yes, most probably. So it was OK with you that they cleared an area for your house to stand on, and cut trees down to build it AND you plan to bring more lives into the world to do the same? Yet are upset that someone dared to harvest his land? ---
**Author:** ![Ogre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecb155/32.png) [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 7:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goddamnit-you-idiots-cant-you-leave-one-piece-of-pristine-forest-alone/489365/62 "2009-03-14T07:07:31Z")
> [@curlcoat](#): > > So it was OK with you that they cleared an area for your house to stand on, and cut trees down to build it AND you plan to bring more lives into the world to do the same? Yet are upset that someone dared to harvest his land? Riiiiight. An already urbanized area is exactly the same as a a large, unspoiled area in the middle of one of the most biodiverse ecosystems in the Temperate world. ---
**Author:** ![curlcoat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ea5d25/32.png) [@curlcoat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/curlcoat)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goddamnit-you-idiots-cant-you-leave-one-piece-of-pristine-forest-alone/489365/63 "2009-03-14T07:29:41Z")
> [@Ogre](#): > > Riiiiight. An already urbanized area is exactly the same as a a large, unspoiled area in the middle of one of the most biodiverse ecosystems in the Temperate world. Every urban area was once a large, unspoiled area. It always amazes me when someone is upset about the loss of their personal favorite place, when they don’t understand their own contribution to it. You don’t want this to keep happening? Don’t have children and encourage others to do the same. Otherwise, they will have to keep clearing out those large unspoiled areas to build houses for all the new people. Provided we don’t die from global warming that is… ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 9:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goddamnit-you-idiots-cant-you-leave-one-piece-of-pristine-forest-alone/489365/64 "2009-03-14T09:14:47Z")
> [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](#): > > Now see that’s pretty fucked up. You have a habitat, nothing like it anywhere (per OP), and money from shitty cabinets at Home Depot. > > The shitty cabinet money is more important to you. Species come and go, it’s the experts who know this that paradoxically seem to get the most upset when it happens before their eyes. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goddamnit-you-idiots-cant-you-leave-one-piece-of-pristine-forest-alone/489365/65 "2009-03-14T12:25:48Z")
Ogre: You haven’t directly answered the question about permission. Did you have the landowners permission to be there, or go caving? ---
**Author:** ![MichaelQReilly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@MichaelQReilly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelQReilly)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goddamnit-you-idiots-cant-you-leave-one-piece-of-pristine-forest-alone/489365/66 "2009-03-14T15:20:28Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > There’s no such thing as land being “incalculably valuable in terms of what the replaceable value would be” or “valuable beyond remuneration” (things like a baby’s smile and puppy kisses can be those things, but not land). There’s just the market, and the process of the market says how much something is worth. Ogre apparently wasn’t willing to or didn’t have the ability to pay the market price for avoiding the destruction of an ecosystem that exists nowhere else on earth. So, he’s just like the guy who can’t afford anything else the guy wants. He doesn’t have any Well, luckily all of us don’t subscribe to the Law and Economics school of thought. ---
**Author:** ![Stratocaster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stratocaster/32/16393_2.png) [@Stratocaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stratocaster)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goddamnit-you-idiots-cant-you-leave-one-piece-of-pristine-forest-alone/489365/67 "2009-03-14T15:33:33Z")
> [@Scylla](#): > > Ogre: > > You haven’t directly answered the question about permission. Did you have the landowners permission to be there, or go caving? He answered, post 28. He has permission. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goddamnit-you-idiots-cant-you-leave-one-piece-of-pristine-forest-alone/489365/68 "2009-03-14T15:40:26Z")
Rather than hijack this thread to debate libertarian issues of property rights and the idea of community interest in property use, I started [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=510278) over in Great Debates to discuss the question, setting up a rather bland and partrially undefined proposition from which to work in debating the issues. ---
**Author:** ![Ogre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecb155/32.png) [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goddamnit-you-idiots-cant-you-leave-one-piece-of-pristine-forest-alone/489365/69 "2009-03-14T18:23:46Z")
> [@curlcoat](#): > > Every urban area was once a large, unspoiled area. It always amazes me when someone is upset about the loss of their personal favorite place, when they don’t understand their own contribution to it. You don’t want this to keep happening? Don’t have children and encourage others to do the same. Otherwise, they will have to keep clearing out those large unspoiled areas to build houses for all the new people. > > Provided we don’t die from global warming that is… Don’t think for one second that I “don’t understand my own contribution to it.” I’d wager that I understand far better than you do, in fact. However, I am NOT contributing to the loss of these old-growth forests. My house was built of wood that came from this area. The property on which it stands, as it happens. Far from being “unspoiled”, this area was an industrial town long before my house was ever built. It’s silly to take the “every place was once unspoiled” approach…especially since I’m not advocating “every place”. There are lots of places where that ship has already sailed. They are urban, paved, mined, despoiled. Whatever. I don’t have to love it, but it happened. Build all you want to within those areas. Fuck urban sprawl. Fuck edge cities. Fuck those bastard developers who still have hundreds of McMansions in “exclusive gated communities” unsold because they were speculating on White Flight. And FUCK already-rich assholes who despoil something that was recently beautiful and pristine just for the timber value of it. ---
**Author:** ![Ogre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecb155/32.png) [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goddamnit-you-idiots-cant-you-leave-one-piece-of-pristine-forest-alone/489365/70 "2009-03-14T18:25:38Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > Species come and go, it’s the experts who know this that paradoxically seem to get the most upset when it happens before their eyes. Ah, you must know how the whole web upon which we depend weaves together, and which species are “necessary”! Wonderful! I’ll expect to see your elucidation of the entire ecological structure of planet earth in _Science_ soon. You realize you’ll win a Nobel for this, right? ---
**Author:** ![Ogre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecb155/32.png) [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goddamnit-you-idiots-cant-you-leave-one-piece-of-pristine-forest-alone/489365/71 "2009-03-14T18:26:47Z")
> [@Scylla](#): > > Ogre: > > You haven’t directly answered the question about permission. Did you have the landowners permission to be there, or go caving? Post #28, slick. ETA: :smack: Thanks, **Stratocaster**. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goddamnit-you-idiots-cant-you-leave-one-piece-of-pristine-forest-alone/489365/72 "2009-03-14T18:41:33Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > Well…I like to think that my view is more reality based. We DO allow private land ownership…that’s reality. We DO put certain constraints on what you can and can’t do. Assuming he has broken no laws he is free, within those constraints, to do what he likes on HIS land. That’s reality. > > Whether what he did was a good thing or not is another matter. But until and unless it’s decided to seize all privately owned land (for the ‘good of the public’ of course) this is how it is.-XT Now, now, Xtisme, let’s not go excluding the middle quite so vigorously. It would certainly be possible to put great constraints how owners of land with old growth forest on it use their property without ending property rights as we know them for everyone on the planet. ---
**Author:** ![Mojo\_Pin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Mojo\_Pin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mojo_Pin)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goddamnit-you-idiots-cant-you-leave-one-piece-of-pristine-forest-alone/489365/73 "2009-03-14T18:59:45Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > There’s no such thing as land being “incalculably valuable in terms of what the replaceable value would be” or “valuable beyond remuneration” (things like a baby’s smile and puppy kisses can be those things, but not land). There’s just the market, and the process of the market says how much something is worth. Ogre apparently wasn’t willing to or didn’t have the ability to pay the market price for avoiding the destruction of an ecosystem that exists nowhere else on earth. So, he’s just like the guy who can’t afford anything else the guy wants. He doesn’t have any I’m no economist, but it’s obvious there’s some kind of market failure here. Like how car makers and buyers give a lot less of a shit about emissions than they should, because it’s everyone’s problem but just their money. There is a third party that stands to lose something yet has no say in the market price, the countless future generations. If all those yet unborn nature lovers could pool into the market exactly what the conservation of pristine forest means to them, there is no doubt they would outbid the greedy rich individual of this story. I also find it surprising that you consider babies’ smiles and puppy kisses to sometimes be valuable beyond numeration–a baby is only worth it if it’s lifetime output of smiles is greater than amount of grief it will cause you from ages 13-17 plus college tuition, and the value of a puppy’s kiss can also be weighed similarly 😛 ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/73ab20/32.png) [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tao_s_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goddamnit-you-idiots-cant-you-leave-one-piece-of-pristine-forest-alone/489365/74 "2009-03-14T19:13:57Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > Species come and go, it’s the experts who know this that paradoxically seem to get the most upset when it happens before their eyes. I think a distinction you’re missing is species are going as a result of greed for Home Depot shitty cabinet money. It’s the difference between an accidental fire burning down an irreplaceable master piece, and someone sticking a lit stick of dynamite in it to collect the insurance money. Both make us poorer as a people, but one’s the result of a selfish greedy asshole. ---
**Author:** ![Stratocaster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stratocaster/32/16393_2.png) [@Stratocaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stratocaster)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goddamnit-you-idiots-cant-you-leave-one-piece-of-pristine-forest-alone/489365/75 "2009-03-14T21:38:58Z")
Mojo Pin, the car emissions analogy was on the money. I’ve been struggling to form my thoughts around this, and that helped a lot. I tend to be pretty libertarian, but I am troubled by cases like this. If we restrict personal property rights, what would we base it on? Your point shines a light on it. Land is a personal property that is not owned in perpetuity (typically) and it may possess attributes that others have a legitimate interest in. I can obstruct others’ view of the river. I can jeopardize a life form (I don’t believe people have the right to roll the dice with the ecosystem, something that can can affect us all in ways we can’t even foresee). I can unreasonably block access to a beach. I can ignore laws to provide certain maintenance to shoreline property so that erosion is minimized. But is that ethical? “It’s mine” wouldn’t be sufficient cause, ISTM, not in every situation. IOW, It’s possible to restrict someone’s use of personal property in a manner that is not overbearing. Someone who virtually depletes a resource, threatening an ecosystem or creating a void that can either never be replenished or will take hundred of years–he has enjoyed the benefit of this depletion, without suffering the bulk of the cost. A cost, in this case, that is arguably assigned to “everyone else.” If Rand or someone points out that “everyone else” doesn’t have to pay for the property or its upkeep either, well, yep, that’s the part that makes it troubling. But I believe no rights are absolute, property rights included. I’m more comfortable when such matters are codified by law, subject to public debate. Then the answer is, “you knew those were the rules when you bought the land.” I’m a firm believer that leaving such matters up to individual discretion ultimately, however long it takes, leads to a series of a-holes who take “what’s theirs” and leave a barren gash of worthless land in their wake. I acknowledge that the line may be difficult to draw in a given case, whether or not it is in this case. And I am a very personal rights type of person, with strong libertarian inclinations (believe it or not, after reading this post), but I’m troubled by situations like this at least enough to think it’s not as simply resolved as stating, “well, he owns it.” Not always that simple, anyway. Not when the effect is the one Ogre describes. I think assessing the effect on a parcel of land like this to everyone else, the effect on the ecosystem, is a reasonable restriction. It should at least be considered. Wow, that was longer than I started it out to be. Sorry. Mojo Pin, thanks again. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goddamnit-you-idiots-cant-you-leave-one-piece-of-pristine-forest-alone/489365/76 "2009-03-14T22:53:36Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > It would certainly be possible to put great constraints how owners of land with old growth forest on it use their property without ending property rights as we know them for everyone on the planet. Just to reiterate a point raised earlier, 100 year old trees are beautiful and majestic but they are not old growth. I’d like to see the evidence that this land was truly ecologically rare and valuable. It may very well have been, but I’d like to know more about why this particular land was so rare. ---
**Author:** ![Ogre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecb155/32.png) [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goddamnit-you-idiots-cant-you-leave-one-piece-of-pristine-forest-alone/489365/77 "2009-03-14T23:02:08Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > Just to reiterate a point raised earlier, 100 year old trees are beautiful and majestic but they are not old growth. I’d like to see the evidence that this land was truly ecologically rare and valuable. It may very well have been, but I’d like to know more about why this particular land was so rare. You’re going to have to take my word for it. If that’s insufficient, then I’m sorry. For four years, my job was to inventory species in this area, and to conduct ecological monitoring (fire effects, air quality, water quality, etc.) I know what I’m talking about. I have been very deep into this cave system, and I was not looking at it with amateur eyes. This is something I have studied for, oh, more than 20 years now. ---
**Author:** ![Ogre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecb155/32.png) [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goddamnit-you-idiots-cant-you-leave-one-piece-of-pristine-forest-alone/489365/78 "2009-03-14T23:12:08Z")
Oh, and to address the point about old-growth: in this part of north America, 100+ year-old stands display most of the characteristics of true old-growth, including mixed age stands, individual tree mortality, mixed level canopies, thick organic layers, high groundcover biodiversity, and fungal ecosystems. There are few “true” primary stands in the area as well, defined as areas that have never been logged, mostly because of steep inclines and inaccessibility. However, enterprising bastards that we are, these stands are also slowly disappearing due to the advent of helicopter logging, a rarity in Eastern forests until fairly recently. ---
**Author:** ![curlcoat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ea5d25/32.png) [@curlcoat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/curlcoat)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goddamnit-you-idiots-cant-you-leave-one-piece-of-pristine-forest-alone/489365/79 "2009-03-14T23:22:23Z")
> [@Ogre](#): > > Don’t think for one second that I “don’t understand my own contribution to it.” I’d wager that I understand far better than you do, in fact. However, I am NOT contributing to the loss of these old-growth forests. My house was built of wood that came from this area. The property on which it stands, as it happens. Far from being “unspoiled”, this area was an industrial town long before my house was ever built. It’s silly to take the “every place was once unspoiled” approach…especially since I’m not advocating “every place”. There are lots of places where that ship has already sailed. They are urban, paved, mined, despoiled. Whatever. I don’t have to love it, but it happened. Build all you want to within those areas. Fuck urban sprawl. Fuck edge cities. Fuck those bastard developers who still have hundreds of McMansions in “exclusive gated communities” unsold because they were speculating on White Flight. > > And FUCK already-rich assholes who despoil something that was recently beautiful and pristine just for the timber value of it. You don’t see the irony of this? Where are your children to be going to live? And your friends’ children, your nieces and nephews if you have any, your grandchildren? No matter how you rationalize it, you and/or yours are going to end up being the reason those McMansions were built since there are always families that need a home to live in, and not enough to go around given the population growth. If you don’t already have children, why are you not living in an apartment so that a family of multiple people can live in your house and not have to buy one of those new McMansions? The ship may have already sailed on the land your house stands on, but as long as people keep willy nilly having children, more and more land is going to be logged for wood to built houses with and then cleared for those houses to be built on. We all make selfish choices. Yours is to live in a house instead of an apartment and to plan to have children. The land owner’s was to log his property. Apparently, the only reason his decision is worse is because you don’t like it. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goddamnit-you-idiots-cant-you-leave-one-piece-of-pristine-forest-alone/489365/80 "2009-03-14T23:34:24Z")
> [@Ogre](#): > > Ecology \> Property rights. I was trying to be sympathetic till you said this. You really blew it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goddamnit-you-idiots-cant-you-leave-one-piece-of-pristine-forest-alone/489365.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goddamnit-you-idiots-cant-you-leave-one-piece-of-pristine-forest-alone/489365.md?page=5)