Tens of thousands of jobs were lost, mostly in rural communities, and attempts to help retrain these workers were a failure. Some of these communities were able to rebuild their economy around eco-tourism but most have fallen into poverty and are still struggling.

As you can imagine, many people negatively affected by these laws feel strongly against them. The idea that a politician several states away can pass laws preventing you from using your land the way you intend simply doesn't sit well with many people.

Spotted owl numbers are continuing to decline, but now the blame is being placed on a different type of owl pushing out the spotted owl.

That's about 0.6 of the original coverage % per year. Assuming the historical rate, if not restricted, that's five years to clear out the remaining old growth redwood.

Modern logging methods become ever more efficient, which means that without legal restrictions we could log out all old-growth redwoods in less than five years.

What rural communities are coming up against is not fundamentally a legal restriction, but a resource limit. It just so happens that this resource restriction is being reflected in legal restrictions before we loose all of our old-growth forests.

No matter what happens those jobs are going to disappear. They are either going to go away in our lifetimes, and there will be old growth redwoods, or they will go away a few years later and there will be no old growth redwoods.

That's the reality.

If we want to keep those jobs alive and still keep redwoods then we have one option: outlaw power tools while limiting the number of loggers.

I guess there aren't too many logging jobs now in the middle eastern deserts.

Once you cut the old growth down, what regrows is not the same landscape. I know most loggers don't care about this, but many of us do.

https://www.hakaimagazine.com/features/the-cavernous-world-u...

But blaming a bunch of hippie environmentalists is, of course, easier, then taking responsibility for its mistakes.

How many more years of logging jobs would those communities have gotten, before the jobs would dry up because the trees are all gone? 10? 20? And then who would the loggers blame, when there's just no old growth forest left?

I wonder why?

> Spotted owl numbers are continuing to decline

Meanwhile, the logging industry remains dead.

Hardly. Logging is a huge industry up-and-down the west coast, just like it is in the southeast. It's just not a free-for-all.

Commercial fishing underwent the same process, but nobody is saying commercial fishing is dead. There's still resentment. The labor market shrank. But AFAICT the fishing industry isn't in denial about the fact that regulation, including quotas, was needed. Especially after some of the fisheries bounced back.

"Anything other than spiteful" isn't dehumanizing. Humans can be spiteful, and can operate in a way that seems entirely driven by spite and still be people; some of us even had parents that seemed this way (if you didn't, ask among your pals).

Thinking is doing. I would argue that Rachel Carson did a great deal. http://www.rachelcarson.org/

Informing us that we are ignorantly, recklessly ruining the only place humanity has to live is doing something. Consider how our ill-considered 'doing' has left us with limited alternatives and a ticking clock.