...forests are breaking out all over America. New England has more forests
since the Civil War. In 1880, New York State was only 25 percent forested. Today
it is more than 66 percent. In 1850, Vermont was only 35 percent forested. Now
it's 76 percent forested and rising. In the south, more land is covered by
forest than at any time in the last century. In 1936 a study found that 80
percent of piedmont Georgia was without trees. Today nearly 70 percent of the
state is forested. In the last decade alone, America has added more than 10
million acres of forestland.
There are many reasons for America's arboreal comeback. We no longer use
wood as fuel, and we no longer use as much land for farming. Indeed, the amount
of land dedicated to farming in the United States has been steadily declining
even as the agricultural productivity has increased astronomically. There are
also fewer farmers. Only 2.4 percent of America's labor force is dedicated to
agriculture, which means that fewer people live near where the food grows.
The literal greening of America has added vast new habitats for animals,
many of which were once on the brink of extinction. Across the country, the
coyote has rebounded (obviously, this is a mixed blessing, especially for
roadrunners). The bald eagle is thriving. In Maine there are more moose than any
time in memory. Indeed, throughout New England the populations of critters of
all kinds are exploding. In New Jersey, Connecticut, and elsewhere, the black
bear population is rising sharply. The Great Plains host more buffalo than at
any time in more than a century.
And, of course, there's the mountain lion. There are probably now more of
them in the continental United States than at any time since European
settlement. This is bad news for deer, which are also at historic highs, because
the kitties think "they're grrrreat!" In Iowa, the big cat was officially wiped
out in 1867, but today the state is hysterical about cougar sightings. One of
the most annoying tics of the media is always to credit the notion that
human-animal encounters are the result of mankind "intruding" on America's
dwindling wild places. This is obviously sometimes the case. But it is also
sometimes the case that America's burgeoning wild places are intruding on us.
...
Goldberg cites the UN's March 30 "Millennium Ecosystem Assessment". As is to be expected from the title and organization, it is a profoundly pessimistic report which claims the earth is careening toward oblivion and places the blame for this squarely on human development. So how is it that America -- the world's most developed, wealthy, capitalist nation -- is also home to one of the few positive "millenium ecosystem assessments"? And how is it that America's environment has improved so dramatically without correspondingly dramatic government direction and intervention?
America's cities continue to scrape the skies, its suburbs continue to tame the wildernesses, and its population and economy continue to grow by leaps and bounds, but Americans are intruding less and less onto the natural world, largely due to America's technological progressivism and highly-competitive capitalism, which make possible and encourage a phenomenal efficiency. Leftover chips from lumber production are converted to "particle board" sheets, fish are farmed rather than plucked from vast oceans, deserts with ideal crop-growing temperatures and sunlight are transformed by long-distance irrigation into agricultural oases, and so on, all reducing America's demands on the natural world while America moves from strength to strength economically.
In many jurisdictions, especially including my native Nova Scotia, environmentalist efforts are government-driven, restrictive, and anti-development. Environmentalism takes the form of limitations and outright bans on home and business construction, legislative conferring of "sanctuary status" on vast swaths of land to preclude "commercial exploitation" there, prohibitions against spraying lawns for pests or throwing out tin cans and banana peels, etc. Anti-development environmentalism even holds sway at the level of international relations, as Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin recently presumed to "oppose" the U.S. decision to drill for American oil on 0.0001 percent, or 2,000 acres, of the 19,500,000-acre Alaska National Wildlife Refuge.
But the astonishing statistics on re-forestation in the world's greatest economy are the final proof that the best environmental protection is technologically-advanced development, not no development.
No comments:
Post a Comment