An interesting piece, though the writer retains a few blind spots herself. "Communities that depend on the rape of natural resources are filled with people who love those communities desperately." Well, think of the people outside those communities who also depend on those natural resources. Those high-priced Manhattan apartments probably have wood floors. Something is fueling their heating system. The forests of Pennsylvania may well be the best-managed in the world, and they are managed for harvest. As for clear-cutting, some trees need to be clear-cut if you want their lumber. As an actual logger once explained to me, if you spot cut oaks, the oaks you don't cut will quickly spread their canopy of leaves and branches and not give the oaks that sprout beneath enough sun. So you clear-cut a segment and plant some new oaks. Obviously, you clear-cut judiciously. That particular logger told me that he had stopped taking out the branches of the trees he cut because they provided good fertilizer for the forest. He knew trees better than anyone I have ever met. He could just pat the bark as he walked past one and tell you what it was. He was sort of like an American Indian honoring the spirit of the deer he had to kill.
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