DUDE’S CORNER
On a recent road trip, I wasn’t driving so was able to observe what was going on in the terrain.
What I saw disturbed me. I didn’t see “progress,” I saw destruction. Bulldozers were doing wholesale destruction. They were knocking down all the trees in certain parcels. Just wholesale destruction. And they were ripping up all the lower plants too. Then they call it “real estate.” Hah! I call it “Rape Estate”! It would have been entirely possible to build a few houses without cutting down magnificent trees, trees which provide oxygen for us and homes for wildlife. But no, they were doing a clear-cut!
To these destroyers of the land for the sake of the dollar, they do not seem to mind that they are destroying the habitat of all the little critters as well. They are just crushed, along with all the plants. Is this really what we all want? In my view, it is out of control. The land has value, and when the habitat is destroyed, for all practical purposes it is destroyed for ever. I was seeing way too much hurt to the land, and it will come back and bite us in the ass, somehow, in ways that we often cannot predict. Destroying the land in this way is a short-sighted profit grab, with costs that will come later.
How can wanton destruction be called progress? This is so “old school,” and now we need the Monkey Wrench Gang more than ever! Ed Abbey, where are you when we need you the most. (Oh, Ed Abbey died in the late 1980s!) And I see no one else with Abbey’s wit and wisdom — we just might be doomed but maybe don’t know…
Hey, Dude lives!
By Seldom Seen DIRTTIMEDUDE MCLEAN
