An interesting TED Talk about the giant redwoods in California. Some pictures of climbing / camping up in the canopy and lots of information about what goes on up there. I had never heard that the redwoods were fractal for example.
First: (and this the crux of my environmentalist philosophy) 96% of the Redwoods have been destroyed; and most of it in my lifetime (including into the 90s). These are ecologies which will likely not re-emerge within the lifetime of the human race. And we are destroying them at the fastest rate ever for a little bit of money.
Second: this sort of publicity seems good until low-IQ, weekend environmentalists decide to take part and traffic through the area. This sort of dillatantery turns my stomach. It's a bit like the aid crowd that insists on going to the site instead of sending money and thus confusing good works with tourism.
3 comments:
This was fascinating.
I have two comments.
First: (and this the crux of my environmentalist philosophy) 96% of the Redwoods have been destroyed; and most of it in my lifetime (including into the 90s). These are ecologies which will likely not re-emerge within the lifetime of the human race. And we are destroying them at the fastest rate ever for a little bit of money.
Second: this sort of publicity seems good until low-IQ, weekend environmentalists decide to take part and traffic through the area. This sort of dillatantery turns my stomach. It's a bit like the aid crowd that insists on going to the site instead of sending money and thus confusing good works with tourism.
"ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" is described here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recapitulation_theory
I agree about the downsides of publicizing the explorations of the treetops but I think that in a sense that is just security by obscurity.
It will be interesting to see what happens the first time a tourist falls 200 feet from a tree when they get up in the night to go to the bathroom.
Post a Comment