Sunday, June 05, 2011

Only Two Types

With respect to the environment, I've noticed in a decade of working as an (un-)civil  engineer, there mainly tends to be only two of types people I run across: those who trash everything and the fanatics.  The former group wants to shit their own bed; the latter wants to do nothing.  Neither seems capable of much thought. The idiots who don't seem to consider the environment as something worth saving are just abortions, and don't merit any consideration.  The fanatics, on the other hand, can't seem to see the forest for the trees (or around here, the Puget Sound for the water).  A case in point concerns incidental harassment of marine mammals.  The fanatics will do everything they can to put restrictions of pile driving so as not to bother the sea lions.  As a native fisherman once hotly explained, what's killing the marine mammals is their diminishing food supplies, not noise from a pile driver.  Therefore, old creosote treated timber piling is not being replaced by steel pipe piles as quickly as would otherwise be the case.  Creosote is fatal to fish spawn, but they can actually live on steel piles.  Therefore more fish die, more sea lions starve, but at least it isn't too noisy.  What a world...

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