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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 |
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Why can't mountain bikers just tell the truth?!
"Mike Vandeman" wrote in message ... Can I possibly be a worse troll? It sucks to be me. If you say so. |
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