Just When Things Were Looking Up

Just when I was beginning to believe Vermont was going to turn around by leveraging its 'green' credentials I find out that 'green' isn't hip anymore. It turns out a whole lot of scientists just went before Congress to dispute global warming. It's starting to look like the tide is turning and we haven't even figured out how to make a buck yet. The pace of change is dizzying. First it was cooling, then it was warming, now it's not changing at all. How can a planned economy keep up with such a maddening pace?

So what do we do now? Back to the basics, I suppose - you know, the basics like creating wealth by producing/doing things people want instead of pretending we can survive by tricking people into paying us for not cutting our trees. Actually, I kind of like the classic way of making money because I never really understood how my trees were going to make everybody else money. I'm not saying all the trees are mine - it's just that the eco plans never seemed to specify what trees and who owned them and I already have plans for my trees, blueprints actually, and I suspect other folks have plans for their trees too.

Comments

[Robbo Holleran]

Well put. As you know the "consensus" on global warming does not pass the laugh test, but I just saw a Time magazine (in a waiting room) that clearly states that the debate is over. They wish it was.
But my business is all about "tree planning". I am a consulting forester, and there are some interesting things going on. The real scientists generally agree that good carbon management is good forest management, in the traditional, products oriented approach, to silviculture. It would be easy, and some foresters do, jump onto the bandwagon to wave the global warming flag to promote forestry. But then you have the eco-scientists for whom every problem is solved by "cutting less, cutting infrequently or not cutting at all" and somehow they see this as the answer to carbon management. Bill Keaton from groovy U-V is in this camp. UVM just forfeited their Society of American Foresters accreditation, by the way. So they want to ignore the growth rate of timber, which is equal to the CO2 seqestration rate, and ignore the mortality rate, and just look at maximizing the stocking levels (unhealthy crowding). Long before you get to "old growth", growth rate equals mortality and net growth (net carbon storage) is zero.
Of course, the eco-fascists are planning, right now, on what to do with YOUR trees, and my clients' trees.

Merry Christmas...