I was listening to the radio while driving between time share weeks and the conversation turned to the foolishness of the elites who want to control our lives by regulating our use of energy. They commented on America’s riches in energy that we are not allowed to use. We were called the Saudi Arabia of Coal. We have vast reserves of oil but the environmentalists won’t let us drill. And then they came to trees. They pointed something out that I knew but put it in a way that I had not thought of before.
Trees are a renewable resource.
I have had this discussion with students at school. They are always trying to tell me I am killing trees by making them get out paper and write. I look at them with big eyes and ask in my most dramatic style, “Do you know what happens when you cut down a tree?” What great dread they ask me, “What?” I tell them, “It grows back!”
So if they won’t let us drill for oil, maybe we need to bring back the Stanley Steamer and use wood to power our automobiles. Of course so many of our children are raised in sterile metropolitan areas or the deserts of the Southwest. They don’t realize that in areas where it rains the trees just keep growing. You can’t stop them. Of course people who have never driven across North Dakota still believe the world is overpopulated, too.
I guess they need to get out more. Maybe a nice long drive in a car driven by gasoline.
homo unius libri
When I was a kid, West Virginia was 75% forested. After a half-century of timber-cutting, it's now 80% forested. Sort of puts the lie to a lot of tree-hugger ideas. Now rain forests in other countries and some old-growth areas in ours are a different story. Even then, you can only save so much old growth, or it becomes old compost.
ReplyDeleteI have heard there are more trees now than when the Pilgrims landed. Your statistics would fit that pattern. I have seen and enjoyed the Giant Sequoias of California. I would fight anyone who wanted to cut them down to make paper but no one is thinking that.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the data.
Grace and peace.