For you whippersnapers that was a quote from a great American, Walt Kelly, who drew the comic strip "Pogo". Old Walt is long dead but spoke better than he knew.
The greatest danger to the ecology of the world is the sheer number of people on it.
I was born just before WWII. The world population was about 2.2 billion then. It's probably over 6 billion as we speak. From the time my great-grandfather was born in 1842 till my birth the population only grew by a billion. In my lifetime it has almost tripled.
The severest dregradation of plants and animals comes from subsistance farming cultures that wreak havoc just so their people can live for another year or even another month.
We in the West are big time consumers and big time polluters but we know our sins and we will not let ourselves commit ecological suicide.
Nobody in the Third World has the power to stop the starving masses who will slash and burn and kill just to survive for another day.
If David Hazen wants to save the world's ecology he's going to have to go to India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Bengladesh, China, Mexico and any other place where the gross national product is made up of mostly of babies and sell them folks on the benefits of limiting their numbers.
I think the Jane Goodalls, Diane Fosses, tree huggers, Fund for Wildlife, Nature Conservancy,UNESCO, Greenpeace, etc. are all doing the Lord's work but in reality they are just spitting in the ocean.
In the end hungry humans will keep exploiting everything around them until there ain't no more. Then they will come here.
I'm going to have fun until I'm elbowed aside.
Pogo Possum, where are you when we need you?
Thanks for letting me spill my guts.
Charlie

Here's an open letter I posted just today from a small topic from yesterday
: regarding the responsible use of boatbuilding resources and specifically,
: David Hazen's recent announcement that he no longer supports
: epoxy/glass/wooden boats as environmentally sound.

: One of the stronger, driving forces to go kayaking and canoeing is to get out
: on the water, away from our crowded cities and congested lives. I've
: always marvelled that as small boaters we spend considerable amounts of
: time and energy building and buying our craft that are made from materials
: that contribute greatly to the very things we are trying to escape.

: The question then is; How do we balance our desire to go boating with the
: facts that the resources that we use to build those boats are dwindling
: and ultimately degrading the planet?

: You can view this as rhetorical in nature or take a direct response. The
: response can be from your gut or it can come from study, data and
: scientific understanding. What matters is that we, as practitioners of the
: craft, start looking to ways of how to deal with some of the
: inevitabilities of fewer trees and more complex methods for the supply of
: petroleum resources for our boatbuilding products.

: I'm not intending this as a geo-political referendum at this point, though
: there is an inevitable path that will likely lead all of us there. More,
: I'd like to gain some understanding of the attitudes of the group as to
: how we solve some of these issues now so that boat builders of the future
: have the same opportunities that have been handed to me.

: As posted: Tom, It's great that you reference Hazen's book. He made some
: significant contributions to the boatbuilder's craft. As noted below on
: another posting, he has now taken the position of not supporting the
: building of boats with wood strip (and I also assume marine ply) with
: epoxy and glass.

: After some research, I find that while his position is supported decently by
: considerable data with regards to vanishing species (trees) and depleted
: and overworked forests that supply traditional boatbuilding woods, he
: fails to completely flesh-out his argument from a more personal
: perspective. (I did not follow the link on his page to this end)

: Perhaps this deserves a rather lengthy and seperately detailed thread for the
: purpose of discussing responsible boat building in this day and age?

: Agree with Hazen or not, he still has data to support his argument and so far
: I'm still looking for the other side of the coin in this potential
: discussion.

: Keep in mind that I say all this as I complete a fairly involved project
: building a performance sailing, canoe/trimaran in S&G epoxy glass build
: style.

: We do need to look at this issue further as boat builders and work to
: mitigate the future problems of our chosen craft.

: The forum is always open.

: Chris Ostlind