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Monday, December 06, 2004Philippine mudslides and illegal logging...The Belmont Club has an excellent piece on illegal logging in the Philippines and its role in some pretty devastating mudslides. The most important point boils down to this: in the real world, even communists are capitalists. Everyone needs money. Everyone needs income sources. And in corrupted societies like the Philippines, one of the many things for sale is waivers from the laws. One thing not for sale, unfortunately, is legal timber - at least not enough of it. Seems the greens got most logging outlawed as well as killing off the idea of tree plantations. The result? No incentive to protect trees from illegal logging because a) no one owned them and b) with most logging being illegal, lumber prices went up enough to make it worth the risk of getting caught. Wretchard suggests some good capitalist solutions for making more lumber and fewer mudslides, but these will not, of course, come to pass because international environmental activists are usually anti-capitalists looking for a friendlier looking disguise, not people who actually care about the planet or its inhabitants and Philippine politicians are usually not advocates of the people but fraudsters who found a better gravy train than used cars. Or at least it looks that way. 
posted by gbarto at 1:59 AM |
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