Tuesday, September 28, 2010

CLEAR CUTTING =LANDSLIDES AND FLOODS?


Clear Cutting = Landslides and floods?
Yes. Not always, but mostly. From Haiti to Pakistan to Mexico and to Port Alice, Port Hardy, Bella Coola, to…well, wherever there are massive mudslides and flooding the first thing to inquire is how extensive is the clear cutting in the area. Many of Haiti’s largest towns are primarily big mud holes because they have no trees left to hold back the rain from the mountainsides. There is speculation that the recent accelerated clear cutting of the forests in Pakistan is primarily responsible for the massive flooding there. Industrial forestry is swallowing up forests in every part of the globe including British Columbia and yet nothing seems able to stop it. It’s almost as if one giant chain saw is denuding the forests of the earth under various giant forest corporations and their smaller subsidies that contract out to even smaller independent subsidiaries. And usually with government subsidies (the money of all of us private people who together make up the huge public tax contribution to this province.) These subsidies from us is given to the very corporations who besides stealing our trees, are making mud holes.
And it is so unnecessary. Some countries are trying to move toward community owned (leased to a community of forestry workers) forests and forestry workers who know how and are willing to do selective logging. Without this kind of intervention, could British Columbia also become a province of giant mud holes where thriving cities and towns used to be? Of course. We have everything here to make that happen; the practice of clear cutting, dwindling forests due to over cutting, tree diseases, forest fires, and most of all, giant corporations determined to cut it all down even if that requires just shipping out the raw logs. And we have our uncaring provincial government who evidentially loves giant logging corporations, the bigger and more destructive the better, and an attorney general (political appointee) who will try to lock anybody up forever who dares protest. It a perfect storm of converging factors designed to denude British Columbia of what is left of our forests. And first Nations pride. And the beauty, health, and glory of British Columbia and its entire people.

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