Why can't mountain bikers just tell the truth?!

Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2007 20:10:15 -0800 (PST)
From: Mike Vandeman
Subject:
To: Ryan Kay

You didn't refute anything I said. It's true
that
mountain biking is not sustainable, and finding
other bad things to compare it with doesn't
change that. By your logic, we should ignore
assault and burglary, because they aren't as
bad
as murder.

You also didn't tell the truth about that cell
phone study. It didn't say "no evidence of harm
to bodies". It said "no cancer".

Why can't mountain bikers just tell the truth?!

If you don't like people telling the truth
about
mountain biking, why don't you move to a
country
without freedom of speech, like North Korea?

--- Ryan Kay wrote:

take a step off your soap box and look
around.
mountain biking "non-sustainable." Do you not
eat food that comes from the environment or
ever drive a vehicle? obviously, you use a
computer and that was probably shipped from
china consuming non-sustainable resources and
exposing children to toxic metals etc. did
you
not see the latest research of cell phones,
no
evidence of harm to bodies. get off your
platform.

ryan kay

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Vandeman
To: Recipient list suppressed:;
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2007 09:35:35 -0800
Subject: "Divisive Issue"

To:

February 21, 2007

Nature Conservancy

"Divisive Issue" (Winter 2006 Issue, p.6)

To the Editor:

Times change. We learn new things, and old
ideas become obsolete.
It's inevitable. For example, we can no
longer
safely assume that
water from mountain streams is safe to drink.
As Mark Gross stated so
eloquently, exploiting wildlife and wildlife
habitat, for pleasuring
humans, is fast becoming obsolete (although
dropping support for
Nature Conservancy seems counter-productive
to
me). The
rationalizations for such exploitation are
transparently just that.
Aldo Leopold is a good example of discarding
obsolete notions (the
killing of wolves) when they become clearly
untenable.

This not to say that denigration of the
"exploiters" is okay. I can't
really criticize 19th century Americans for
not
anticipating modern
conservation biology. And I don't think that
difference of opinion
necessarily means we can't get along and work
together. There will
probably always be compromises "on the
ground".

But I don't see any reason to compromise on
telling the truth! Yes,
we are animals somewhat like other animals,
but
we are not a natural
part of any ecosystem. We are a species that
is
native to part of
Africa, and everywhere else a very late
newcomer, i.e. an exotic
species. Like all exotic species, we have
arguably no right to
access, much less exploit, local ecosystems,
especially when those
activities threaten native species (except
that, when it's
convenient, we claim that "might makes
right").

There is no honest way in today's environment
to rationalize hunting,
fishing, and "collecting" of native species,
or
non-sustainable
recreational activities like mountain biking.

Michael J. Vandeman, Ph.D.


http://home.pacbell.net/mjvandehttp://home.pacbell.net/mjvande

References:

Ehrlich, Paul R. and Ehrlich, Anne H.,
Extinction: The Causes and
Consequences of the Disappearances of
Species.
New York: Random House, 1981.

Errington, Paul L., A Question of Values.
Ames,
Iowa: Iowa State
University Press, 1987.

Flannery, Tim, The Eternal Frontier -- An
Ecological History of North
America and Its Peoples. New York: Grove
Press,
2001.

Foreman, Dave, Confessions of an Eco-Warrior.
New York: Harmony Books, 1991.

Knight, Richard L. and Kevin J. Gutzwiller,
eds. Wildlife and
Recreationists. Covelo, California: Island
Press, 1995.

Louv, Richard, Last Child in the Woods --
Saving Our Children from
Nature-Deficit Disorder. Chapel Hill, N.C.:
Algonquin Books of Chapel
Hill, 2005.

Noss, Reed F. and Allen Y. Cooperrider,
Saving
Nature's Legacy:
Protecting and Restoring Biodiversity. Island
Press, Covelo, California, 1994.

Stone, Christopher D., Should Trees Have
Standing? Toward Legal
Rights for Natural Objects. Los Altos,
California: William Kaufmann,
Inc., 1973.

Vandeman, Michael J.,


http://home.pacbell.net/mjvandehttp://home.pacbell.net/mjvande,

especially


http://home.pacbell.net/mjvande/india3http://home.pacbell.net/mjvande/india3,

http://home.pacbell.net/mjvande/sc8,


http://home.pacbell.net/mjvande/scb4http://home.pacbell.net/mjvande/scb4,

and


http://home.pacbell.net/mjvande/scb7http://home.pacbell.net/mjvande/scb7.

Ward, Peter Douglas, The End of Evolution: On
Mass Extinctions and
the Preservation of Biodiversity. New York:
Bantam Books, 1994.

"The Wildlands Project", Wild Earth.
Richmond,
Vermont: The Cenozoic
Society, 1994.

Wilson, Edward O., The Future of Life. New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.
===
I am working on creating wildlife habitat that is off-limits to
humans ("pure habitat"). Want to help? (I spent the previous 8
years fighting auto dependence and road construction.)

Please don't put a cell phone next to any part of your body that you are fond of!

http://home.pacbell.net/mjvande

"Mike Vandeman" wrote in message
...

Can I possibly be a worse troll? It sucks to be me.

If you say so.