Elwha: Roaring back to life

In a nutshell, it is kind of like how America was winning the cold war with Russia by investing something like 3% or 4% of the American economy in our military versus their 20% to 30% of the Russian economy. They were bleeding their economy to death and could not keep up.

So, ultimately, if we really want to continue supporting the unprecedented billions worth of human population, we need more nature and trees, not less. We need our buildings to multitask, with solar panels on the roof and things like that, so we can shrink our per capita footprint while raising our per capita quality of life.

I am just glad technology is emerging that has the potential to reconcile that friction. Historically, it was an either/or choice. It needs to be an and choice and that is increasingly feasible.

Cheers! And thanks for asking. It reminded to me look it up, something I had been intending to do anyway.

For me, one of the nice things about living in Washington State is that the choice that makes the most economic sense is not always the one that is chosen. It would make a lot of economic sense for Seattle to sell off huge chunks of its massive parks system, but that doesn't happen. Tree removal and water protection ordinances are the norm and they are, by and large, enforced. There's a healthy respect for the nature found all over the state.

(I'm not arguing that "not following the economic choice" is the majority outcome; far from it. But coming from a state that lived up to the rule of streets in suburbs--bulldoze all of the trees and name streets after them--and pushes its Congressional delegation for exemptions from environmental rules in order to get man-made lakes built, it's a nice change.)