PG&E filing bankruptcy....

[gadfly56]

i will see your observation, and raise you a possible insight......

after seeing some areas clear cut, the visceral act of many people is
to prevent anyone from doing anything, ever again. that's how we got here.

unfortunately, a forest fire, and clear cutting have the same effect,
except that the soot and ash are messy.

you can extract timber in a esthetically attractive manner, but not at a reasonable price.

I will grant you that clear cutting looks ugly, but the stuff is DEAD! Clear cutting doesn't necessarily involve clearing the underbrush, while a fire will take that out and sterilize the soil for a bonus. And they have some truly amazing machines now that have very low impact on the forest floor.

https://youtu.be/cd3SKnfJCyY

 

[petersonra]

Who would have thought that people would live so long? The air isn't safe to breath, the water isn't safe to drink and the food would have exterminated the dinosaurs . How where they supposed to know that people would live long enough to retire?

The gold plated pension promises made to public employees at all levels of government was never sustainable and even some of the reduced (but still gold plated) benefits some places have adopted are not sustainable either. It is not a matter of how long people live. Actuarially that has not changed all that much over the last 30 or 40 years. The problem is the benefits have gone up a lot and there is no end in sight.

 

[Fulthrotl]

I will grant you that clear cutting looks ugly, but the stuff is DEAD! Clear cutting doesn't necessarily involve clearing the underbrush, while a fire will take that out and sterilize the soil for a bonus. And they have some truly amazing machines now that have very low impact on the forest floor.

https://youtu.be/cd3SKnfJCyY

you are preaching to the choir, honest.

the problem is, big lumber, like big oil, or big anything,
behaved poorly enough in years gone past, that we have
a populace that reacts emotionally, and not logically.

and thinning forests in a sane manner means you'd have
virtually an unlimited supply of wood, and not have people
looking at you like you'd just clubbed a baby seal.

but it's a lot more per board foot to produce lumber that way.
and that is the rub.

 

[ggunn]

...dilemma is one you can't win every time.

I believe this is the definition of "dilemma".

 

[Fulthrotl]

I believe this is the definition of "dilemma".

the premise of "two horns" as in the ones on
an angry and charging bull.

 

[drcampbell]

There's another wrinkle:

California commission finds PG&E falsified records for years
https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/15/us/pge-falsifying-records/index.html