03-08-2008, 03:31 AM
Good morning,
Sorry, I don't want to sting anybody with the "eco-crowd" comment. Obviously by some definition I'm one of those. However, I think we can admit that among those who call themselves "environmentalists" there is a major component that is far more "fashion" driven than "evidence" driven, and certainly not science and data driven. This is very very dangerous--biofuels probably being the worst current example, but millions of people have died of malaria this world because passionate but uninformed urbanites decided to blanket ban DTT, now finally a bad lifted. My point is that we haven't the luxury of dogmatism, dumb ideas kill people: and I'd like to see an effort to get after dogmatic ideas, or we're going to end up with a homeopathic cure for climate change.
Right now we're simply marching to burn forest, under an ecological pretext.
James however is dead right about one thing: Hawaii imports 90 percent of its food. This is absurd and must change! Still, I'm sure that a stand of non-native trees does a much better job of climate preservation than any cropland can, and we should move with the utmost of caution.
I think a place to start, rather than clearing would be here. Since much of the development in Puna has been on land zoned AG, by the letter of the law one isn't supposed to live there unless the land is used for food production. If, one was REQUIRED to produce a food crop of a certain value to keep the residence--say 1000 dollars an acre annually, we'd fix our food problem and provide opportunity for thousands of jobs, we'd have entrenched local agriculture, and we'd have food falling out of our ears. Most importantly, we'd have a population that simply couldn't live in a utter vacuum of knowledge about what it takes to get food to the grocery store. Legal precedents exist for mandatory crops especially during wartime. It's not that far out, really, and this sort of idea would fix a lot. And it doesn't involve any clearing.
Just a wild ass suggestion demonstrating a different way to think.
Sorry, I don't want to sting anybody with the "eco-crowd" comment. Obviously by some definition I'm one of those. However, I think we can admit that among those who call themselves "environmentalists" there is a major component that is far more "fashion" driven than "evidence" driven, and certainly not science and data driven. This is very very dangerous--biofuels probably being the worst current example, but millions of people have died of malaria this world because passionate but uninformed urbanites decided to blanket ban DTT, now finally a bad lifted. My point is that we haven't the luxury of dogmatism, dumb ideas kill people: and I'd like to see an effort to get after dogmatic ideas, or we're going to end up with a homeopathic cure for climate change.
Right now we're simply marching to burn forest, under an ecological pretext.
James however is dead right about one thing: Hawaii imports 90 percent of its food. This is absurd and must change! Still, I'm sure that a stand of non-native trees does a much better job of climate preservation than any cropland can, and we should move with the utmost of caution.
I think a place to start, rather than clearing would be here. Since much of the development in Puna has been on land zoned AG, by the letter of the law one isn't supposed to live there unless the land is used for food production. If, one was REQUIRED to produce a food crop of a certain value to keep the residence--say 1000 dollars an acre annually, we'd fix our food problem and provide opportunity for thousands of jobs, we'd have entrenched local agriculture, and we'd have food falling out of our ears. Most importantly, we'd have a population that simply couldn't live in a utter vacuum of knowledge about what it takes to get food to the grocery store. Legal precedents exist for mandatory crops especially during wartime. It's not that far out, really, and this sort of idea would fix a lot. And it doesn't involve any clearing.
Just a wild ass suggestion demonstrating a different way to think.