Yes, John D., Vermont was mostly deforested. And, have you seen those pictures? [img]graemlins/1puke.gif[/img] The beautiful town of Woodstock, so pretty that Wall-Streeters go there and buy $1.5mil. wooden cute village mansions to get away from it all in, was a muddy sog-fest. It's hills were stump-beds. It took going to the brink of ruin to instill the notion of "Stewardship" in folks like Billings and Rockefeller that turned it around. Go here for more info. Now, Vermont is 95% forseted and much happier for it.

The point is not "don't touch anything or develop." The point is can't we leave SOME places pristine. When I go hiking I like to actually get away from the sounds of cars and the sight of power lines. And being as I get a PAH/benzene headache from my 13-block walk to work every morning, it's really nice to have a "pure" environment to escape to every now and again.

And, with fragile environments, a few thousand drills and the cars and industry to support them will hurt the environment much more. But, again, its not about the notion that I know or even think there will be resulting harm.

It's about thinking "should we do this" before going ahead with the "can we do this." It's about PRECAUTION.

Oh, and any scientist will tell you that in any experiment you should have a "baseline" trial group that you do nothing to, so you can judge what changes you actually caused. This is ESPECIALLY true when the human industrial "experiment" is with the entire planet and there is no RESET button. ;)

Assume the worst, and work to avoid it. This is a much better philosophy that assume everything will be fine. It's also more mature.

It will take 20 years, more or less, to prepare the ANWAR for drilling and get started. I vote we prepare it, so it's ready to go if we need it. Then, we DON'T USE IT until we must. This is an especially good tactic considering this is a finite resource and we don't really know when other resources will run out. We should plan AS IF America will be here and need this stuff in 10,000 years.

[ 03-01-2003, 04:53 PM: Message edited by: Timber Loftis ]

Careful about what you say should be done to the forests of Vermont, John! Some of us like it just the way it is! ;)

Mark

Yeah the pictures of Vermont I saw while up there looked bleak at best.

On the second part of your statement AMEN to that! :D Yes you have to prepare for as much as you can posibily thunk of, and then for a couple of things you can't thunk of ;)

<font color="#ffccff">TL I too like to get away from the civilized world now and then [img]smile.gif[/img] is why I hike, but I defy you to hikein ANWAR [img]smile.gif[/img] you better pack for an arctic adventure, because ANWAR is waaaaaaay inside the arctic circle and not all that far from the pole.

What JD said has a lot of merrit too, as crowded as we seem to think the US is, there are absolutely HUGE tracts of land with no people, roads or cars ont hem most of the time...flying cross country will give you some idea, but most of the time you are too high to really get a good look. I really recomend that everyone do a coast to coast drive, then do a Maine to Florida drive. You get a whole new perspective on things.</font>

[ 03-01-2003, 07:55 PM: Message edited by: MagiK ]

Well, I realize the arctic conditions, MagiK, which is why I also mentioned keeping a "baseline" pristine place so we can use it to analyze the part of land we've industrialized. I would assert we need several such "control groups" for each type of ecosystem so we can appropriately monitor our industrialization impacts.

HUGE tracts of land - where have I heard that before? Isn't that a good reason to marry someone? :D J. Cleese aside, though, I don't feel so happy-slappy about the view when I fly. I've mentioned the apportioned and cut-up squares to you before. But, I do catch your meaning. My reply is that given one of the best pieces of real estate on the planet, the US should make extra-careful to take good care of it. Same philosophy that makes one careful with their new sports car. You may drive it hard a bit to test it out and get a thrill, but you'll still rub it with a cloth diaper more often than you'll race it.

BTW, I made San Francisco to Vermont in under 60 hours, including pulling over for a nap. How's that for the cross-country. I-80 in ALL its horrible glory. :D