Hi Tweets,

Bob Norton writes:

> It is a great honor to draw the attention of the very literate and
>intelligent Michael Price whose communications are clear and very voluminous
>and which I cannot match.

The money, Bob. Just send the money. '-)

>I usually agree with him but he does misunderstand
>one of the things I was trying to say

Not having godlike powers, this is depressingly possible.

> I did not mean to imply that David"s remarks were broad and inflamatory.
>He was asking for advice only. The advice he was getting seemed to run to the
>fight the bastards type of advice.

Point taken. But it was a 'heart' question he asked, unqualified by degree;
people, myself included, responded emotionally because we care what happens
to these areas. Well, and particularly where there's competing, exclusionary
interests, caring and the head sometimes go in different directions, don't
they?

>I hold that we will do best if we marshal
>our facts and with reasoned arguments try to influence the decision so the
>least harm is done and the best mitigation is obtained.

But in the long view, wherever it goes, the steel mill will likely be only
the first such industrial development there. Often such a development serves
as an 'anchor' in much the sam way that a flagship retail store anchors a
shopping mall. I'll simply make the observation that if this one goes
through it will be that much harder to stop the rest. Here is an opportunity
to maintain environmental integrity to a great extent in a sensitive area,
rather than watch its slow degradation. The responses to David's query
indicated a wish not to accept the steel mill as a fait accompli, with
attempted mitigative measures as the only option to those concerned about
its impact.

>I certainly am
>concerned with preserving habitat and making life easier for our wildlife. It
>is really just a case of what approach is going to yield the best results.

Reasonable. I'm sorry if I said anything in my previous post that impugned
your motive or intent, Bob. If present, such came from my misunderstanding.

>Our best opportunity comes with
>helping to force them into the least enviromentally damaging site and
>monitoring compliance with enviromental guidelines. Some of the best results
>have come from conservation groups suing the EPA to force them to enforce
>their own regulations.

Same here, though environmental regulation here, being essentially offloaded
to the provinces (whose governments are usually no friends to the
environment), is nowehere near as enforceable as in the US; the same
obstinacy is there.

> With the loss of logging jobs which was due to increasing automation as
>well as other nonenviromental factors, the timber companies won the battle
>of public opinion in making it an owl versus jobs choice. You can fool most
>of the people most of the time if you have clever people with enough money
>behind them.

They get the Nobel for Spin, that's fershur. As someone once said, if these
outfits would just do the right thing from the start they'd save themselves
millions of dollars in PR fees *and* the public would give them goodwill for
free (and as any staute businessperson can tell you, that usually translates
from warm-'n-fuzzy to profit as well). That's such a no-brainer, I don't
know why they don't get it.

Michael Price The Sleep of Reason Gives Birth to Monsters
Vancouver BC Canada -Goya
mprice at mindlink.net