>"...but there are still many healthy trees of other species out there, as well as the standing dead pine."<

Fortunately.

>"Indeed, the pine beetle problem in the BC Interior has been described as the biggest natural disaster of its kind in recorded North American history."

I think it is more man-made than natural. The burning of trillions of tons of fossil fuels during the last 100 years had to have some consequence eventually - and it is called Global Warming.

1800 of the world's most eminent scientists, including Nobel laureates, crafted and sent a letter to President Bush, expressing the urgent need to deal world-wide with the effects of man-made global warming by reducing emissions immediately - no reply, apparently.

Bush, Howard and Harper have yet to sign on to Kyoto. Most of the rest of the world already has.

Pity.

I believe that we are shamefully shortsighted when it comes to sustainability; there will be no such thing as twilight-years in the forest industry if we begin now to explore the potential for new products and new markets. The forest and all resources must be treated as renewable and sustainable meaning we need dedicate ourselves to'farming'or 'gardening' not extracting. Our resources can no longer be considered 'staples; they are integral to our future. We will never be far from 'hewers of wood and drawers of water'; that is our blessing, our natural economic advantage, our raison d'etre. Sustainability is about creating a community heart and pulse - building from within. "The environment is not a gift from our ancestors, but a loan from our children."

We reap what we sow

The forest industry is dying in British Columbia and good riddance to it. The forests have been devastated by the forest industry and chainsaws, bulldozers and logging trucks have scarred and polluted the land from Washington to Alaska. We don't need to expand this industry, we need to destroy it.

The Pine Beetle is here because hominid apes like us lack any sense of ecologically responsibility.

I have no sympathy for loggers. For two centuries these hominid bipedal termites have been eating away at the trees, destroying the most magnificent, and laying waste to the habitat of hundreds of species where the forest is a home and not a source of toilet paper and cedar decks.

When I look out over the obscenity of a clear-cut I feel an overwhelming sadness and a seething anger at the greed and excess of human society.

I spent 6 months in the sixties planting trees and feeling like I was posing as a Johnny Douglas Fir cone, dropping seedlings into the ground. I knew I was wasting my time when we planted 10,000 dead trees one day. I remember commenting to the crew boss that the trees were dead and he answered that we were "paid to plant the bastards and nothing in the contract says they have to be alive." When I reported this I was fired.

Instead of planting trees I found more job satisfaction in spiking trees although the health and salary benefits were not so good.

I feel a great sense of satisfaction when I see those areas of the forests that I helped to spike in the eighties like the south slope of Grouse mountain or Meares Island. We inoculated those trees from the hominid borne disease called clear-cut logging.

In less than two centuries humans have transformed and diminished the land. Vancouver Island was once known as Comox or the land of plenty. Now the salmon have been decimated, the wolves and bears eradicated, the aboriginal cultures smashed and trivialized - what a frigging piece of work is man, how ignoble in reason. how infinite in greedy faculties, the paragon of anthropocentric conceit, the most destructive of animals.

The Olympics are also a joke - a jingoistic competition to see which nation has the fastest, strongest, dumbest specimens. These people spent most of their young life training and suffering to perform in a two week circus and then 99% of them are forgotten while the 1% goes on to sell Wheaties or yoghurt.

And is this what life is about? The effort of years of training for the sole purpose of shaving 1/10 of a second off the record of some uber person from before. As the Earth burns, people run, swim, jump, dive, ski, and do backflips and figure eights on ice so they can stand on a podium and proudly watch a piece of rag hoisted over their head. What does the geographical location of a person's birth have to do with their ability to pole vault or slide down an ice chute steering a sled with their ass cheeks?

The bottom line is there are to many people and the world's 6.8 billion humans are out of control. More people, more houses, more cars, less trees, less fish, less water, less clean air.

Men need to keep it in their pants and women need to close their legs and we all have to stop popping out the bambinos on the naked ape assembly line.

We have built economic and social systems that are dependent upon unlimited growth. Humans are so damn common now that no one blinks or gives a thought when a plane goes down and snuffs a few hundred. And how many people have been killed in Iraq? Lancet says 650,000 while Bush says that only a mere 30,000 have died? I guess were supposed to feel good with a "mere" 30,000 deaths and what the hell are they anyway, just faceless numbers. We don't know them and even if a few of us may have known one or two American soldiers who died fighting for "freedom" we have the consolation that they died as heroes. Hell anyone who gets their nuts blown off or loses a fingernail in this ridiculous war is called a hero although we are not allowed to see their flag draped coffin unloaded back home in the land of the once free and the home of the pathetically brain dead.

But back to the forest industry. I hope the B.C. forest industry strangles in it's own corruption and greed and chokes on the water it has polluted. This industry has controlled the economy, the politics and the media in British Columbia ever since Mr. Lover of the Universe governed the land over a century ago. We no longer have forests, we have managed rows of renewable product. A forest was designed to be a home to millions of non-hominid Earthlings, it was not designed to be made into homes for one species of Earthling.

Human beings, the great conceited naked ape who has become a divine fantasy in our own minds, the be all and end all, the supreme product of evolution, or so we like to think. From Homo erectus to Homo arrogantus, a species to deviously clever for our own good, lacking memory and devoid of the ability to envision the future, living in the now, wanting it all now and justifying it all with silly pie-in-the-sky fantasies of flying monkeys, pustulating prophets, murky messiahs, and megalomaniacal Gods made in the image of their creators.

We are a species that continually spurts out babies so we can kill them in wars, a species that wipes out the fish and blames the seals, a species that fouls the air, the water and the land with poisons and freaks out when some Congressman sends an e-mail to a page. Yes, a species whose priorities are so screwed up we will pay millions for a photograph of Tom Cruise's kid instead of helping to feed a HIV infected toddler in Africa. A species obsessed with instant gratification and constant entertainment.

We are frigging insane and our insanity is so advanced we think it is normal. Two hundred million people have been slaughtered, tortured, raped and mutilated by us normal people in the last century alone. But hey, we defeated Hitler and now we have George W(hat an asshole) Bush.

That pseudo Texan shrub alone is proof positive that Americans have gone off the deep end and Harper is proof positive that the Loonie is a fit name for the loons that spend it.

Okay already. My rant is over for now or at least until someone else send me another right wing wacko story like the one below.

- Paul Watson

Well said Paul however I suggest that your comments will not be seen, by most people, and misunderstood by many who read them. The action in this country is at a donut and coffee shop, shopping mall, hockey game, or gambling casino. All ventures that will enhance the mind and mend the body.

Show me a Politician that cares about People, the enviroment, etc; and is willing to say and do the tough things that need to be done to save this Country from itself, and I will show you a politician that cannot get elected.

Eat potatoe chips, and hot dogs, drink pop and beer, put on 40 pounds, break wind, and have a good life. That seems to cover it.

Most of what Paul Watson says is so, but for one thing: his admission that he spiked trees. That is a criminal act, bad enough but understandable if it harms no one. However, spiking trees puts fallers lives in danger and makes him no different than the people he condemns. Its something to be ashamed of, not to brag about.

Paul be careful about Amour de Cosmos he was one of BC's true patriots.

One of BC�s founding fathers Amour de Cosmos who in the 1870 fixed legislative debate on confederation said, �I would not object to a little revolution now and again in British Columbia after Confederation if we were treated unfairly.� lol

One of many great quotes from a great character and patriot to BC, commonly known as Mr 'Lover of the Unverse'.

Terrific read, Mr. Watson! We all know how we got to this stage of human evolution, it is all history now and none of it can be undone.

The question is: How will we do things differently in the future? Or will we? Look at the politicians that are running our country and the equally idea-less opposition parties! It doesn't look very promising - they are all lining up at the trough, pretending to support either the right wing or the left wing agenda.

The ultimate emasculation of Canada is yet to come, shortly: the integration of Canada and Mexico into the United States of America, European Union style. That is when the plunder of the last Canadian resources will really begin in earnest - you ain't seen nothing yet! We will all have the same currency, which means that Canadians and Mexicans (Mexico and Canada have huge oil reserves) will be ordered to step up to the till and help pay off the huge war debts that have been piled up by the man from the Lone Star state!

from Lefty's post: "How would the local economy fare if one pulp mill and 4-5 local sawmills closed their operations?"

We will find out.

Interestingly, it can also be "modelled" right now from a socio-economic point of view.

This comment was e-mailed to us for inclusion:

"I would like to say a few words to Paul Watson. First of all, I am sure he gets some of his �donations� or whatever he lives on from these same people that he claims �devastated� the province. The only reason everything is being cut down at this time is because the tree huggers convinced the government to leave the trees in Tweedsmuir Park, thereby giving the pine beetle a stranglehold on the pine forests he so dearly loves.


I would also like to know if he eats meat or fish as well, or does he live off berries and wild vegetables. Does he grow his own garden? Mr. Watson seems to want to put the blame on anyone but himself for all the woes of the world. Has he ever had a real job where he pays taxes or are the rest of us supporting him as well? Does he have any children that we support as well?


It makes me extremely mad when I look at the amount of taxes I pay each year for the whole country to have a better way of life, and someone like this comes along and basically says that each of us that have a job that is in the forest industry or depends on it are all fools.

Thank you.

Duffer