Sustainable logging at its current levels makes the logged-out areas in the West look like it does now (stumps, new growth forests which aren’t 1:1 replacements, etc).
To get back to “how it’s supposed to be” as sustainable logging promises, we’re talking 100 yr+ timeframes to even make solid progress, not a full easy replacement. So, the environment is still degraded under that approach.
I’ve lived rural and urban coastal, and your view highlights a perspective I started to notice only when I lived rural West, and it’s frustrating:
To support pro-environmental needs of the densely populated and often coastal urban centers, the last remaining near/wild environments bear the cost and get carved out under the banner of pragmatic sustainable use - logged out, REM mines, wind farms on mountains, etc.
For instance, if every rural wind farm was met with a wind farm in SF Bay or Cape Cod or… I’d be ok with it, but the reality is it’s not done this way, and in fact heavily resisted due to vacation home views and so on. Bitteroots and Bighorn ranges have massive REM deposits discovered. This was spun as a positive env news story vs a massive mining threat to some of the best un-impacted/well managed areas of the Rockies. On and on.
So let’s raid our mountains and last wild places to support environmentally unsustainable lifestyles in the dense areas, who get to avoid none of the tradeoffs I describe that the actually wild areas now face. Doesn’t sit well with me. What’s the point of environmentalism if we destroy the last best parts of the environment.
To get back to “how it’s supposed to be” as sustainable logging promises, we’re talking 100 yr+ timeframes to even make solid progress, not a full easy replacement. So, the environment is still degraded under that approach.
I’ve lived rural and urban coastal, and your view highlights a perspective I started to notice only when I lived rural West, and it’s frustrating:
To support pro-environmental needs of the densely populated and often coastal urban centers, the last remaining near/wild environments bear the cost and get carved out under the banner of pragmatic sustainable use - logged out, REM mines, wind farms on mountains, etc.
For instance, if every rural wind farm was met with a wind farm in SF Bay or Cape Cod or… I’d be ok with it, but the reality is it’s not done this way, and in fact heavily resisted due to vacation home views and so on. Bitteroots and Bighorn ranges have massive REM deposits discovered. This was spun as a positive env news story vs a massive mining threat to some of the best un-impacted/well managed areas of the Rockies. On and on.
So let’s raid our mountains and last wild places to support environmentally unsustainable lifestyles in the dense areas, who get to avoid none of the tradeoffs I describe that the actually wild areas now face. Doesn’t sit well with me. What’s the point of environmentalism if we destroy the last best parts of the environment.