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How come the other countries were allowed to benefit from logging and destroying their own primeval forests, but because Poland was the last one they're being c

How come the other countries were allowed to benefit from logging and destroying their own primeval forests, but because Poland was the last one they're being called out? If the UN or EU were serious about this, they'd offer to buy out the forest at whatever the market rate is for this wood, and Poland would use that money the retrain the forest workers.

webnrrd2k 9y ago
That's a good point. It's also worth considering this: isn't there a difference between having 90% of a forest left and 5% of a forest? I know that it's not exactly fair, but that is more-or-less the situation we have now. There were once vast swaths or virgin forest, and now there is very little left. Are the situations the same? Should people behave the same now as they did then? Ultimately everyone needs to decide for themselves.
Neliquat 9y ago
Because they, too, know better? I get your reasoning, but with equal position one could argue that in the clear retrospective light of our failures, theirs would be a larger one, by both proportion, and foreknowledge of its effects. Its a sticky wicket because nobody has good economic incentive to save it right now.
- test6554 9y ago
  The conclusion of "old things must be preserved" leads to a sticky wicket as you call it. Maybe it is the wrong conclusion. What if we started instead with a question: "What is the best use for this land" and then work out from there.
  - omginternets 9y ago
    "When the sage points to the moon, the fool looks at his finger". The argument is most assuredly not that "all old things must be preserved". Rather it's that this old thing should be preserved. The fact that the forrest is old is incidental. It's only relevant because it explains that we can't just pull a new primeval forrest out of our asses. But you knew this.
danbruc 9y ago
While I understand what you are aiming at, I don't think it is that simple. Should someone pay me for not having slaves and not being able to profit from exploiting them because I am a century or two late and missed the good old time when it was not yet an unacceptable practice?
- nordsieck 9y ago
  If you legally acquired them, then yes. The British experience ending slavery was far more humane than the US one.
  - danbruc 9y ago
    I don't think I would agree with that, it actually seems somewhat more reasonable to me that one would have to pay compensations to the slaves. But that was not my point anyway. In the past having slaves was acceptable, now it no longer is. Nobody owes me any compensation just because exploiting slaves is no longer an option available to me. In the past it was acceptable to exploit forest without many considerations, but when we now decide that this is no longer the case, then it is at least not obvious that anyone owes you any compensation.
  - lkrubner 9y ago
    You can't own human beings, because it violates their fundamental rights. This was true back when slavery was "legal". The Nazis could pass a law saying that the Holocaust was legal, but the rest of the world felt free to disregard that law, and put the Nazis on trial. Some laws are not legal, that is the whole entire point of the West's 2,400 year old liberal tradition. Likewise, some claims of ownership are not legal, and not binding. You can pay good money for a slave, but you still don't own the slave, because no law can make it legal to own another human being. And this was true for all of the thousands of years that slavery was legal: none of those laws were ever legitimate, and none of those ownership claims were ever legitimate.
    - Swizec 9y ago
      > You can't own human beings, because it violates their fundamental rights. This was true back when slavery was "legal". There's no such thing as fundamental rights. Those were won by sweat and blood. Up until the enlightenment and humanist eras there was not even the idea that such a thing as rights even exists. Some inkling of rights existed for royalty in the codes of conduct and such things, but they were freedoms given by right of birth and power of ancestor's sword. For peasants, no such luck. They were property even though they weren't slaves per se.
strainer 9y ago
>allowed to benefit from logging and destroying their own primeval forests What a sorry idea to still see afloat in 2017, that even the last remnants of special natural habitats should be allowed to be destroyed for "benefit"
test6554 9y ago
Even better. The EU should purchase that entire property and pay the market price for wooded land, pay annual property taxes to Poland and hire Polish workers to maintain and preserve the land for as long as they value preservation over the cost of preservation.
- bananaXbanana 9y ago
  EU already paid it, by letting poland be in the eu.
krona 9y ago
I Agree with your general point, however Poland nominated the land for UNESCO natural world heritage site status, not the UN, or the EU, and such things are protected by international treaties (ie the Geneva Convention).
markvdb 9y ago
Most people don't benefit from the logging and destroying the primeval forests in the country they live in. Quite to the contrary. The rest of Europe has to work with a Polish government right now that is anti-ecology, reactionary and anti-EU. The destruction of trees both in cities and forests is just collateral damage to those in power in Poland.
lkrubner 9y ago
Your question would make more sense if you reversed it: why should Poland lose a priceless treasure just so some greedy capitalists can rape it?
pjc50 9y ago
Accident of history, I suppose; most of the other primeval forest would have gone a long time ago. The remaining patches in the UK, for example, are tiny: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_woodland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_woodland E.g. in 1773 Samuel Johnson’s famous tour of Scotland he complains about the lack of trees in the country. As far as I understand this was due to resource depletion for construction and fuel. WW2 also caused both direct destruction of woodland and huge resource pressure across most of Europe.
riffraff 9y ago
Poland has about 1% of its area as national parks, which is less than most of the EU countries.
frabbit 9y ago
Or alternatively Poland could be kicked out of the EU and UN for failing to abide by the laws and conventions that they signed up to when they joined. I think that would be fairer.
- b0rsuk 9y ago
  Some Polish politicians and publicists believe this is actually what the ruling Law&Justice party is trying aiming for! If Poland is kicked out of EU, they will spin that as "EU is bad, EU is harassing us for no reason". Law&Justice faces a lot of opposition from pro-EU citizens of Poland. If they manage to vilify EU and create turmoil, they can remain in power by blaming everything on external enemies. Law&Justice is using divide&conquer strategy, except they divide their own country and fuel internal conflicts.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    Absolutely. Same thing with Brexit and numerous other phenomena. Nationalists hate supranational and globalist institutions because globalism is totalizing, ie it offers a complete worldview. Nationalism is implicitly predicated on the idea that there's enough for everyone else, this bit is ours, and that what we do here doesn't affect anyone else. Ultimatey, it's an anti-scientific philosophy.
jbmorgado 9y ago
You are totally out of your depth, you don't even understand what you are talking about and you are making a ridiculous argument in defence of destroying an invaluable ecological heritage. This is PRIMEVAL forest. You in Poland DON'T have more protected areas than most of other EU countries already, you just happen to have a small one (relative to other EU countries) that has the special status of being primeval and you still think it's ok to destroy it for some quick profit while the rest of EU is trying to rebuild their own forest (although unfortunately it just can't be primeval again).
omginternets 9y ago
Et tu quoque, mi fili. Whether or not the rest of the EU are hypocrites does nothing to change the fact that this is wrong and alarming.
ajross 9y ago
Poland has been continuously inhabited by wood cutting cultures for thousands of years. That point... sorta doesn't work. You seem to be implying that Poland missed the industrial revolution somehow (it didn't), and/or that the industrial revolution was driven in some significant way by wood products (nope). Or maybe you think Poland during its half-century of artificially stunted development was somehow... not cutting down trees because communism? It's... wood. Communists knew how to build stuff out of it too.

webnrrd2k 9y ago

That's a good point. It's also worth considering this: isn't there a difference between having 90% of a forest left and 5% of a forest? I know that it's not exactly fair, but that is more-or-less the situation we have now. There were once vast swaths or virgin forest, and now there is very little left. Are the situations the same? Should people behave the same now as they did then? Ultimately everyone needs to decide for themselves.

Neliquat 9y ago

Because they, too, know better? I get your reasoning, but with equal position one could argue that in the clear retrospective light of our failures, theirs would be a larger one, by both proportion, and foreknowledge of its effects. Its a sticky wicket because nobody has good economic incentive to save it right now.

test6554 9y ago
The conclusion of "old things must be preserved" leads to a sticky wicket as you call it. Maybe it is the wrong conclusion. What if we started instead with a question: "What is the best use for this land" and then work out from there.
- omginternets 9y ago
  "When the sage points to the moon, the fool looks at his finger". The argument is most assuredly not that "all old things must be preserved". Rather it's that this old thing should be preserved. The fact that the forrest is old is incidental. It's only relevant because it explains that we can't just pull a new primeval forrest out of our asses. But you knew this.

danbruc 9y ago

While I understand what you are aiming at, I don't think it is that simple. Should someone pay me for not having slaves and not being able to profit from exploiting them because I am a century or two late and missed the good old time when it was not yet an unacceptable practice?

nordsieck 9y ago
If you legally acquired them, then yes. The British experience ending slavery was far more humane than the US one.
- danbruc 9y ago
  I don't think I would agree with that, it actually seems somewhat more reasonable to me that one would have to pay compensations to the slaves. But that was not my point anyway. In the past having slaves was acceptable, now it no longer is. Nobody owes me any compensation just because exploiting slaves is no longer an option available to me. In the past it was acceptable to exploit forest without many considerations, but when we now decide that this is no longer the case, then it is at least not obvious that anyone owes you any compensation.
- lkrubner 9y ago
  You can't own human beings, because it violates their fundamental rights. This was true back when slavery was "legal". The Nazis could pass a law saying that the Holocaust was legal, but the rest of the world felt free to disregard that law, and put the Nazis on trial. Some laws are not legal, that is the whole entire point of the West's 2,400 year old liberal tradition. Likewise, some claims of ownership are not legal, and not binding. You can pay good money for a slave, but you still don't own the slave, because no law can make it legal to own another human being. And this was true for all of the thousands of years that slavery was legal: none of those laws were ever legitimate, and none of those ownership claims were ever legitimate.
  - Swizec 9y ago
    > You can't own human beings, because it violates their fundamental rights. This was true back when slavery was "legal". There's no such thing as fundamental rights. Those were won by sweat and blood. Up until the enlightenment and humanist eras there was not even the idea that such a thing as rights even exists. Some inkling of rights existed for royalty in the codes of conduct and such things, but they were freedoms given by right of birth and power of ancestor's sword. For peasants, no such luck. They were property even though they weren't slaves per se.

strainer 9y ago

>allowed to benefit from logging and destroying their own primeval forests What a sorry idea to still see afloat in 2017, that even the last remnants of special natural habitats should be allowed to be destroyed for "benefit"

test6554 9y ago

Even better. The EU should purchase that entire property and pay the market price for wooded land, pay annual property taxes to Poland and hire Polish workers to maintain and preserve the land for as long as they value preservation over the cost of preservation.

bananaXbanana 9y ago
EU already paid it, by letting poland be in the eu.

krona 9y ago

I Agree with your general point, however Poland nominated the land for UNESCO natural world heritage site status, not the UN, or the EU, and such things are protected by international treaties (ie the Geneva Convention).

markvdb 9y ago

Most people don't benefit from the logging and destroying the primeval forests in the country they live in. Quite to the contrary. The rest of Europe has to work with a Polish government right now that is anti-ecology, reactionary and anti-EU. The destruction of trees both in cities and forests is just collateral damage to those in power in Poland.

lkrubner 9y ago

Your question would make more sense if you reversed it: why should Poland lose a priceless treasure just so some greedy capitalists can rape it?

pjc50 9y ago

Accident of history, I suppose; most of the other primeval forest would have gone a long time ago. The remaining patches in the UK, for example, are tiny: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_woodland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_woodland E.g. in 1773 Samuel Johnson’s famous tour of Scotland he complains about the lack of trees in the country. As far as I understand this was due to resource depletion for construction and fuel. WW2 also caused both direct destruction of woodland and huge resource pressure across most of Europe.

riffraff 9y ago

Poland has about 1% of its area as national parks, which is less than most of the EU countries.

frabbit 9y ago

Or alternatively Poland could be kicked out of the EU and UN for failing to abide by the laws and conventions that they signed up to when they joined. I think that would be fairer.

b0rsuk 9y ago
Some Polish politicians and publicists believe this is actually what the ruling Law&Justice party is trying aiming for! If Poland is kicked out of EU, they will spin that as "EU is bad, EU is harassing us for no reason". Law&Justice faces a lot of opposition from pro-EU citizens of Poland. If they manage to vilify EU and create turmoil, they can remain in power by blaming everything on external enemies. Law&Justice is using divide&conquer strategy, except they divide their own country and fuel internal conflicts.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  Absolutely. Same thing with Brexit and numerous other phenomena. Nationalists hate supranational and globalist institutions because globalism is totalizing, ie it offers a complete worldview. Nationalism is implicitly predicated on the idea that there's enough for everyone else, this bit is ours, and that what we do here doesn't affect anyone else. Ultimatey, it's an anti-scientific philosophy.

jbmorgado 9y ago

You are totally out of your depth, you don't even understand what you are talking about and you are making a ridiculous argument in defence of destroying an invaluable ecological heritage. This is PRIMEVAL forest. You in Poland DON'T have more protected areas than most of other EU countries already, you just happen to have a small one (relative to other EU countries) that has the special status of being primeval and you still think it's ok to destroy it for some quick profit while the rest of EU is trying to rebuild their own forest (although unfortunately it just can't be primeval again).

omginternets 9y ago

Et tu quoque, mi fili. Whether or not the rest of the EU are hypocrites does nothing to change the fact that this is wrong and alarming.

ajross 9y ago

Poland has been continuously inhabited by wood cutting cultures for thousands of years. That point... sorta doesn't work. You seem to be implying that Poland missed the industrial revolution somehow (it didn't), and/or that the industrial revolution was driven in some significant way by wood products (nope). Or maybe you think Poland during its half-century of artificially stunted development was somehow... not cutting down trees because communism? It's... wood. Communists knew how to build stuff out of it too.