Re-creating What Never Existed

Milling lumber from dead trees replaces harvest of living trees

A "top five" reason we all spend so much time talking about improving the environment and so little time actually doing something to positively enhance the environment is our seemingly endless desire, especially in North America but, elsewhere as well, to re-create an environment that never existed.

In coming months I will blog on this issue, and others, especially addressing why so many of the “pro-environmental” initiatives we insist our governments undertake on our behalf end up, usually unintentionally, harming the environment. 

As just two examples of how misinformed approaches to resolving environmental issues bring social, economic and environmental harm consider: 

·       Early accounts of the ponderosa pine forests dominating large areas of the West report a horse and wagon could be driven for long distances through the original forest without the need for a road.

·       In my own neck of the woods, a 1945 report on farming reports that 51% of the farms in Whatcom County were 29 or fewer acres in size; 21% were 9 acres or smaller.

In an effort re-create a non-existent past the pop-environmental industry has tried to;

·       Stop thinning and/or logging of overcrowded forests in the pine forests of the west and, locally, in places like my own county in Washington has;

·        Fought to zone large areas of the county to allow no smaller than 40 acre lots in a misguided effort to “preserve farmland.”  Potential farms smaller than 40 acres are denigrated as being “residential lots.” 

The result has been severe existing and potential impacts as these misguided approaches to planning for environmental enhancements bring about;  

·       Massive fires and millions of acres of dead forests kill as the result of insect and plan infestations in the west, emitting thousands of tons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere each year and;

·       On the local scale in places like Whatcom County, a possible end, or at least a constriction of the potential, to engage in profitable small acreage farming (organic and specialty crops especially); exactly the kind of farming representing, according to USDA research (I’ll discuss those studies in the future), the future of sustainable farming in and near metropolitan areas.  Why?  Land becomes too expensive to engage in family scale farming in part due to artificially high prices for small acreages and artificially low values for larger acreages.

Attempts to create static and artificial environments with little attention to reality almost never  result in actual environmental enhancements.  The natural environment is never static.  Species come and go, weather runs hot and cold and the landscape changes.  Misguided approaches to resolving environmental issues, especially approaches attempting to re-create what never existed in the first place almost always limit creativity and result in the unintended consequence of serious environmental degradation in terms of what we believe we wish to preserve. 

In the future this space will contain blogs about the issues discussed above as well as commentary on dozens of other ways we “play” the environment for political or financial gain rather than for environmental enhancement.  A special focus will be on what I call “entrepreneurial environmentalism” or, the investigation of ways in which private enterprise can address environmental enhancement yet still remain profitable.  It is a fact of life that while nearly everyone professes a great love of the environment, few will actually invest a dime, strictly in the name of environmental improvement, in products or approaches likely to actually lead to enhancements.


To the extent that businesses can bring products and approaches to the market that both enhance the environment and demonstrate cost effectiveness to the customer, the environment is improved as a natural consequence of the marketplace in action.