Oregon: It’s illogical to argue that Industrial logging is a lesser more necessary evil than subdivisions
The December 26th editorial in the Oregonian suggested that the
logging industry deserves the support of environmentalists or these
companies might sell their land for subdivisions. Unfortunately the
Oregonian editors relied on flawed information to reach their
conclusions.
I’m sure if they had access to better information we
would have seen a much different viewpoint. The implied message is
that we should tolerate environmental degradation and biological
impoverishment resulting from logging because it’s better than a
subdivision. That’s like suggesting we should encourage people to be
alcoholics because otherwise they might become heroin addicts.
Obviously neither is good for society, and neither are subdivisions
and/or logging impacts. There are two things wrong with such a false
dichotomy. The first is that subdivisions are not necessarily worse
than logging and the likelihood of new rural subdivisions in the
current economy is a minor threat—though obviously in Oregon due to
its terrific land use laws, even this threat is more imaginary than
real. The geographic footprint from all development in the US is
actually quite small. It may not seem that way to someone living in
Portland, but the bulk of the US landscape is not urbanized and/or
developed. http://wuerthner.blogspot.com/2008/12/neither-logging-nor-subdivisions.html