In the interest of saving baby ducks from trampling --- a worthwhile cause, certainly --- it appears that some of us on this list will leave no tern unstoned. Wasn't planning to get into this maelstrom, but two items came to mind; my son, daughter and I ran the Alsek and Tatshenshini Rivers two summers ago on a private trip permit. This run, starting in the Yukon and ending in Alaska, is closely regulated by permits. Most trips are commerical, but some are private. - in the ten days we spent on that incredibly beautiful, totally remote 170 mile set of rivers, none of us ever saw one piece of human-generated detritus. Not a granola bar wrapper, not a single Coke can! Once, when one of our group lost a cellophane candy wrapper overboard, we accepted considerable physical risk in recovering the tiny piece of flotsam, such was our concern for the sanctity of this waterway. We left behind only the ashes of a fellow paddler, for whom this trip was a memorial. Don't think the river minded that. - another non-commercial trip left a day after ours: four Asian tourists with "some" raft experience. The first day has the biggest whitewater, mostly some class four-ish stuff, and, to ensure stability, the four tourists 'binered their two rafts together. Predictably, this did not offset but caused the flip, and the two men and one of the women were recovered. Darwin claimed the other woman for the river. Lessons-learned? Permits and natural selection <can> work. Joq *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************
The latest mails from Rick & Joq came just in time - I think that this environmental/Darwinist/baby duck topic/whatever was getting out of control. Or coming to a dead end... To return the original subject, kayakers and taking care of nature: how many of you are aware, that you can destroy solid, bare rock by setting a campfire on it? The heat of the fire breaks the rock a little, ice forms during the wintertime to the breaks - and it will break the rock more & more during the next years. This will continue supposedly forever, as long there will be winter in this planet [though I am told that this will become a very hot place during the next million years - and not only on the PaddleWise list ;-)]. Have you ever considered the things which might happen when you are walking on a very thin soil found from the outer islands? A good bunch of eco tourists, power boaters, or whoever can do serious damage to the soil just walking around. Stripping the rock bare from the moss. It is as bad as taking fresh wood for your fire cutting branches from the trees. Because the soil is not very fertile there it takes an extraordinarily long time from the trees to recover (of course, only a real idiot would take fresh wood to the campfire because it doesn´t burn very well, but I have seen it happen). I think that Geo in his original comments was quite right - even kayakers can be claimed being negligent, though we usually do consider the effects very minor. How many of us can really boast not having left marks to the nature? Are you sure that you took all the rubbish back with you when you were out last time? BTW: I think that claiming international companies, governments, power boaters etc. is in a way almost the same as avoiding personal responsibility: "not me, them first!" Moral and ethic issues are subjects of real life and everybody´s personal choices. Our´s, meaning the little people. It is time to quit calling each other with various names. [However, it is good to see that these matters are very dear & close to PaddleWisers :-P] Happy birthday, Geo and merry springtime to you all. I saw eight cranes in the middle of Lahti on Tuesday, flying over the center of the city. Ari Saarto Principal Lecturer, dept. of Photography Lahti Polytechnic - Institute of Design Faculty of Visual Communication Kannaksenkatu 22, P.O. 92 15141 Lahti Finland EUROPE GSM +358 - 50 - 526 5892 fax. +358 - 3 - 828 2815 e-mail: asaarto_at_lpt.fi web: lpt.fi/mi/ *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************
On Thu, Apr 23, 1998 at 02:03:24PM +0000, Ari Saarto wrote: > I think that claiming international > companies, governments, power boaters etc. is in a way almost the > same as avoiding personal responsibility: "not me, them first!" I don't think so at all. I take responsibility for what I do: I recycle, I drive a high-mileage car, I telecommute as much as possible (which is far more difficult than you might imagine), I pull lots of trash out of rivers, I belong to American Rivers, the Sierra Club, I write letters to congresscritters, and on and on. But short of locking myself indoors -- and even that's not sufficient -- I *will* have an impact on the environment around me. And every day that goes by I consciously try to minimize it...while recognizing that reducing it to zero is impossible and is thus a pointless goal to pursue. (While "making it less than it is now" is a realistic and worthwhile goal.) HOWEVER...the conservation that a lifetime of my best efforts can produce can be undone in a single day by one sufficiently large entity. In fact, this happens on a consistent, annoying daily basis. Everywhere. So if you're looking for targets to assail, yes, ABSOLUTELY *them* first. If you're truly interested in cleaning up the environment and conserving what's left of it, then start with the biggest culprits first and work your way down the list. That approach takes the biggest bites up front, and does the most good in the shortest time. By that reckoning, I figure I'm several million down the list. So worrying excessively about me, or people like me, doesn't make any sense. Not when there are far bigger fish to fry...which is where my efforts are directed. ---Rsk Rich Kulawiec rsk_at_gsp.org *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************
Rich wrote. > By that reckoning, I figure I'm several million down the list. So worrying > excessively about me, or people like me, doesn't make any sense. > > Not when there are far bigger fish to fry...which is where my efforts > are directed. Hi you all! I did not mean my message to those who mostly are aware about their doings, as Rich is very much. I was asking "how many of you is aware... etc. etc.". It is people, forming groups, starting mailing lists or companies and governments. Then sincerelly, I must draw this conclusion, that it is us who are also buying the products, and supposedly electing the politicians and so saying yes or no. Even if it is sometimes quite hard to decide what somebody is really saying, or what is your own opinion about these matters ;-) >HOWEVER...the conservation that a lifetime of my best efforts can >produce can be undone in a single day by one sufficiently large >entity. This worries me very much. My favorite place, where I did our first trip together with Rita, has during last three years become a littlle worn. Just a little island in the Finnish gulf, where only a few boaters stop during the summer, and there is always some a**hole taking fresh wood from old rowan-trees or pines... Cheers, Ari Saarto Beyond the Horizon - Kannaksenkatu 22 / P.O. 92 15141 Lahti - Finland - Europe GSM +358 - 50 - 526 5892 fax. +358 - 3 - 828 2815 e-mail: asaarto_at_lpt.fi *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************
Ari Saarto wrote: > > > To return the original subject, kayakers and taking care of nature: > >> > >> I think that claiming international > companies, governments, power boaters etc. is in a way almost the > same as avoiding personal responsibility: "not me, them first!" > > Moral and ethic issues are subjects of real life and everybody´s > personal choices. Our´s, meaning the little people. It is time to > quit calling each other with various names. > ************************************************************************* PEACEFUL.... yes, what a concept! I agree with you Ari: It is time everyone quit pointing the finger at others and be more concerned with doing our OWN part in ECO CARE! Eric Shearer Saskatoon Sask. Canada > *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************
On Fri, Apr 24, 1998 at 02:01:29PM -0600, Eric Shearer wrote: > It is time everyone quit pointing the finger at others and be more > concerned with doing our OWN part in ECO CARE! I would absolutely love to chime in here with a cheery "YES!". But I can't. Because while you and I and probably just about everyone reading this are concerned (to varying degrees, to be sure, but concerned nevertheless) with the environment, there are a lot of people out there who aren't. Some of them are simply clueless: they buy 18 MPG SUV's to make trips to the grocery store; they throw out their newspapers instead of recycling them; they try to grow beautiful Kentucky bluegrass lawns in arid areas; and so on. They simply need some gentle (okay, sometimes not-so-gentle) education in order to get them to start, little by little, to do their part for the planet. It's painful, it's annoying, it's irritating, it's maddeningly slow...but it does seem to pay off. Then there are the willfully destructive: the people who dump mine runoff into rivers (e.g. the Cheat River case, which has resulted in a criminal conviction, among other things), the people who destroy habitats for suburbs and shopping malls; the people who throw their garbage down ravines instead of in the dump; and so on. These people need to be hit across the face with a legal/economic/social 2x4 that has "think globally, act locally" written on it. In neither case, however, will either group of people be reached if you and I turn gaze totally inwards. It is necessary for us to act beyond our own personal space if we are to truly have an impact. Which is why I *can* and *do* point the finger at people that I think are responsible for damaging the environment. That activity has *nothing* to do with my own environmental impact, nor is it an attempt to escape personal responsibility for it; it is simple an attempt to put the focus on the biggest, nastiest, ugliest, meanest targets first. ---Rsk Rich Kulawiec rsk_at_gsp.org *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************
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