Posted on 11/21/2004 12:48:29 PM PST by blam
GGG Ping.
Easter Island is a microcosmic example of environmental and ecological mismanagement in a bottle. Even when the island was facing irreversable deforestation, the native people insisted on cutting down trees to transport their precious carved statue thingies to please the gods. All they got in return was a wasteland with no vegetation or topsoil. Even the efforts of the bird-man cult couldn't reverse the irreversable.
sounds like Haiti.
Yeah, good comparison, except the Haitians aren't even making creepy-cool giant heads. No trees equals no topsoil equals no life. What the anti-US greens don't tell you is that there are more trees in the US now than when the pilgrims landed.
A classic cautionary tale. Not enough is known about the social dynamics to place definitive blame. A "tragedy of the commons" could well have been to blame, with the trees up for grabs by the fastest cutters. Who knows if private property rights could have protected the increasingly valuable forests?
Re"The greatest wonder of the ancient world is how recent it all is. No city or monument is much more than 5,000 years old. Only about seventy lifetimes, of seventy years,"
This entire article depends on the notion that we are in fact doing what the Easter Islanders did. I do not buy that. We have more forestation. We are producing not only more food, but more food per person, than ever before.
The fundamental problem with the enviro-nazis is that they do not recognize that it is economic advancement that protects the environment. It is not a surprise that the US environment is better than Brazil's, or Europe's is better than China's.
Exactly. Private property versus common-hold land must be examined.
Farming. Man harnessing nature rather than being at its whims.
Tragedy of the commons BUMP for later reading.
It seems that civilizations whose religious beliefs are useful will flourish, while those with pernicious beliefs will not.
Of course, this dichotomy does not speak to whether any particular beliefs are true or not, only whether they are useful.
We call the Easter Islander's understanding of the universe "religion" but call our understanding of the universe "science", "democracy", "enlightenment", and "truth". Either, and both, understandings are as much "religion" as any other.
Is not the American Liberal delusion "religious"? Is "rationality" ever an appropriate description of humans? Shoot, I watch folks "chop down the last tree" figuratively all of the time. Humans value their delusions very much more than even their children's lives.
Ain't gonna change.
That is just strange.
In Rapa nui there was no ownership of the trees. It was to no individual's benefit to plant trees as they could be cut down by domeone else.
Americans have learned from many of our mistakes. My father, born in 1924, remembered when the great forests of East Texas were nearly wiped out - there was nothing left but clear-cut fields. He raised me to never fell a tree unless there was a need. Part of that was our Native American heritage, but part of it was just common sense. Tree equals soil equals life.
Now East Texas is a forest once again - and by the time my father died, he was able to fell a tree in that forest and know it would still live on in saplings he helped cultivate.
We have learned much. Private American landowners, given the freedom and means to do so, are better stewards of the land than many who preceded them.
It was not agriculture that brought about "civilization" but instead, I gather from long reading on this subject, the development of fortifications impregnable in their day.
The older farming communities, before about 4,000 BC, could not protect themselves from human predation. Either give the brigands whatever they demanded or be burned out. In all cases the old towns from that era showed repeated invasion and destruction by fire. Tax collectors, I suppose.
The basic reality is that it is much easier to have somebody else cultivate crops with a wooden hoe than do it yourself. Then the first effective stone walls hit the scene.
Civilization.
Great book...won't happen here...Jesus will be back long before then...
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