Subject: Re: Uncle Sam says no more Mahogany ?

From: MrCynick <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 1997 15:45:12 -0500

Michael Rainville wrote:

> It is my understanding that they are "ripping and burning entire
> forests" to have open land for more people and cattle. If this is the
> case, mahogany is simply a by-product of this process and if it is
> given no value on the open market (import restrictions) then it too
> will be burned. IMHO limitations are another "feel good" solution to a
> very real, but complicated, problem.
 
Much of the clear-cutting of rain forests in this hemisphere is being
done by huge Asian logging corporations which have already wiped out
most of the big tracts of forest in their own countries. 

Even if it were only for agriculture, though, clearing rain forests and
displacing or destroying thousands of living species, just to make
grazing land for cattle, is a horribly wasteful method of producing
luxury food.  People are raping the rain forests because they have
depleted the soil in other areas by other wasteful practices.  Misguided
or greedy third-world governments encourage this waste because it's
cheaper for them than teaching sustainable farming methods, and because
they get the revenue from timber sales (even though the land often
belongs to indigenous peoples). 

> 30 years of substandard education in the US has left us with a
> population that can't think its way out of a cardboard box. We are
> left with "feelings" but no ability to find logical solutions to
> problems and no ability to understand there are things that the
> government has no real business trying to "fix".

Your education may be substandard, but speak for yourself.  There are
lots of very well-educated people proposing logical and workable
solutions to this kind of problem.  Import restrictions can work very
well if consistently enforced. 

I believe there are lots of problems that governments are not best
suited to solve, but this isn't one of them.  Without government
intervention, the free market will never force destructive industries to
pay their real cost of doing business.  The free market allows them to
make us bear the costs of environmental degradation, including topsoil
depletion, silting of waterways, global warming, flooding, and all the
effects on human health that come with them.

> I have used mahogany in the past, finding it very efficient to use for
> a particular application. Having hit some resistence to its use we
> found a domestic wood that substituted okay. It made no difference to
> people that it took twice a much lumber to make the same item due to
> inherent defects in the wood. Of course now even native spieces need
> to be certified "green" to be okay to some people. Yet my area is
> being taken over by forests and trees aren't being harvested as fast
> as they are growing.

Using mahogany only seemed efficient because you didn't have to pay for
the environmental damage.

You don't say what area you live in, but around here old fields get
filled up with scrub pine and other "second-growth" vegetation, which is
no replacement--ecologically or commercially--for the diverse old-growth
forest we once had.  In the tropics, once a rainforest is cleared, it
can't grow back without intensive human intervention.  It gets replaced
by a handfull of aggressive species which grow up fast and never let the
more slow-growing vegetation (such as mahogany and other coveted
hardwoods) get established.

While American woodworkers are not the real bad guys in the destruction
of the rain forests, we _will_ suffer the consequences, along with the
rest of the world, and we _can_ do our bit to help stop it.  Here are
three things we can all do:

1. Use native and non-endangered woods whenever possible.  If you must
use a tropical wood, use only what is certified as coming from a managed
plantation, not from wild rain forest.

2. Write your Congressmen and Senators urging them to ban importation of
wood from wild rainforests.  This will provide an incentive for
establishing more managed timber plantations and the planting, rather
than the destruction, of rainforest species. Also ask for sanctions
against foreign states that allow destructive logging in their
rainforests.

3.  Support private efforts to protect rainforests, such as the Nature
Conservancy and the World Wildlife Fund.

We don't need to save the earth.  The earth will be here, no matter
what.  What we have to save from ecological disaster is *ourselves*.

-- 
Best wishes,

Jim Crutchfield
Norfolk, Virginia
http://vabch.com/mrcynick

---

From: Andrew Scott Beals <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Mar 1997 00:43:31 +0000

[warning: heavy editing ahead.  I actually agree with both parties to
some extent]

MrCynick wrote:
> > will be burned. IMHO limitations are another "feel good" solution to 

Exactly.

> done by huge Asian logging corporations which have already wiped out

Just by huge corporations.  Our American [and Canadian?] companies are
still trying to convince us that they can harvest old-growth forests
without changing them.

> most of the big tracts of forest in their own countries.

Hey, gotta have toilet paper and paper for books.

Can't grow Hemp: too damn profitable and *bad* for the drug companies
and dow chemical!

How many people would need Prozac if they could just smoke a spleef or
eat a brownie made out of a weed that grows in all 51 states [Hi to all
my relatives and in-laws in the Great White North] to relax now and
then?

How in the world could we support our Prison Industry if we dropped all
of the laws about victimless "crimes"?

> grazing land for cattle, is a horribly wasteful method of producing

Cattle, other cash and substinence crops.  Most folks haven't heard
about ZPG yet still have large families with [relatively] modern
sanitation and medical care.  TOO MANY PEOPLE!  Especially if they're
using inefficient agriculture methods.  [see below]

> depleted the soil in other areas by other wasteful practices.  

Rainforest soil is TERRIBLE for agriculture.  Why do you think they go
through the entire slash'n'burn hassle in the first place?

[otherwise, why would you have slow-growing hardwood in an "ideal"
climate?]

[THINK my brother, THINK]

[yes, I was a Blue-diaper baby]

> belongs to indigenous peoples).

Who had no concept of property before the Europeans showed up....

Adapt or Die.

> well if consistently enforced.

Aye, there's the rub.  The entire planet can't agree to boycott
Iraq/Saddam, much less agree to stop the trade in endangered [mammalian]
species, much less stop shipping trees around.

We still have one corporate buttmunch trying to log an old-growth
redwood forest here in California.  How are we going to get the
developing nations to behave if we can't?

> suited to solve,

Like most all of them.

> pay their real cost of doing business.  The free market allows them to

The uneducated market, you mean.

How many here still buy gas at Exxon stations?  How many can you count
in your neighborhood [I count Zero: the nearest one is about fifteen
miles away].

> depletion, silting of waterways, 

"Please give to help the flood victims in <tropical country>."

The real problem was that they didn't consider the actual costs of
stripping the mountains bare of timber before selling it off for a
short-term profit.

> forest we once had. 

Certainly not with modern fire control policies!  Fire good.

> http://vabch.com/mrcynick

Same to [the both of] you.  Really. 

-- 
HOPLOPHOBIA IS A SOCIAL DISEASE
http://www.scruz.net/~ab/
bandy at cinnamon dot com	DoD#1005
'75 Yamaha RD200, '89 Honda Pacific Coast PC800

posting address buggered to prevent spammers from wasting my precious
dollars
downloading their crap

---

From: [email-masked] (#10 Ox)
Date: Tue, 01 Apr 1997 15:10:48 GMT

On Sat, 29 Mar 1997 00:43:31 +0000 "Andrew Scott Beals
<[email-masked]>" posted to "rec.woodworking" on the subject "Re:
Uncle Sam says no more Mahogany ?" :

-->
-->Hey, gotta have toilet paper and paper for books.
-->
-->Can't grow Hemp: too damn profitable and *bad* for the drug companies
-->and dow chemical!
-->
-->How many people would need Prozac if they could just smoke a spleef or
-->eat a brownie made out of a weed that grows in all 51 states [Hi to all
-->my relatives and in-laws in the Great White North] to relax now and
-->then?
-->
-->How in the world could we support our Prison Industry if we dropped all
-->of the laws about victimless "crimes"?
-->
-

Sorry, you have it all wrong about the reason hemp is illegal:  the USA has
banned its use, production and importation due to the pressing need to
support criminals in Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru and Mexico.  Without
our drug laws, they would be out of business.  These criminals are the
worst kind of filth:  repressing their own people as they accumulate GIANT
sums used for personal enhancement only. they corrupt their own countries
and ours as well.  Making sure that the Illegal drug business is profitable
to these "heros" is a matter of top priority to the government and people
of the United States.  After all, if marijuana were legalized, within 6
seconds every kid from 3 years old up would instantly be a crack addict!
TS

Post Script:  hemp's ancilliary uses as a substitute for beleaguered
forest's products would be counter profitable for the criminals in the US's
forest products industry, as well as to manufacturers of inferior cotton
products.
--"Sufficiently advanced cluelessness is indistiguishable from malice"
--"Truly, wealth, which men spend all their lives in acquiring, is a
--valueless thing at the last."  Haggard
--"This...is...from......Matilda...."  Leon
--"There are no lies in chess"
[email-masked]   http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/2110
--...I get the uneasy feeling that Bill Gates now controls the horizontal and the vertical...
   Craig Sauls via n.g.