[Greenbuilding] Plybooboo

[Rob Tom]

On Wed, 07 Feb 2007 17:57:59 -0500, Andrew Pace, CSI  
<andy at safebuildingsolutions.com> wrote:

> This doesn't sound like the US raping a nation to me.  More so, it  
> appears as though the Chinese have figured out capitalism.

In order for capitalism to work, there needs to be a buyer and a seller.

The "justification" that you've provided above is akin to laying the blame  
at the feet of the prostitutes rather than the johns for the circumstances  
of their unsavoury scenario.

The Chinese were practising capitalism long before the White Man even  
dreamed of the existence of the place that would eventually become the USA  
and it's only taken a few short centuries for the lumber resources of the  
US to be depleted to the point that its inhabitants are compelled to  
import flooring lumber from the most populous/one of the oldest nations on  
Earth ?


> Your lumber harvesting example seems quite eco-friendly, unless you were  
> a card-carrying PETA member.

To those who would gripe about employing draught horses to haul out saw  
logs from the bush, I would say

     "You've never met a draught horse nor seen one at work in the woods  
have you ?"
      (They love what they do. And "No", they would not rather be perched  
in front
     of a TV sucking back brewskis and watching a football game.)

and

    "You've never seen a Timberjack (TM) in action have you ?"
     (Even the most hard-core gizmologist would have difficult time saying
     that what it is/does is even vaguely eco-friendly.)

But to get back to the subject at hand (Green flooring choices)...

In all large urban centres in the USA, wooden shipping pallets represent a  
major disposal problem.
More often than not, those pallets are made of North American hardwoods...  
oak, maple, birch, cherry etc. -- lumber that wouldn't be at all difficult  
to convert into flooring.

So there is definitely no shortage of flooring-suitable lumber in the USA  
and there is really no need to be importing plyboo from China under the  
guise of it being a "sustainable choice for flooring in the USA". It seems  
quite obvious to me that it is not, by any stretch of the imagination.


=== * ===
Rob Tom
Kanata, Ontario, Canada
<A r c h i L o g i c   at  c h a f f y a h o o   dot   c a >
winnow the chaff from my edress in your reply