[MCN] housing booms a main threat to US protected areas

[Lance Olsen]

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. January 12, 2010.
Housing growth in and near United States 
protected areas limits their conservation value.
Volker C. Radeloff, Susan I. Stewart et al.

http://www.pnas.org/content/107/2/940.abstract?sid=4718e5e2-8fa3-475a-9b92-032f399600c3

"   Š  housing growth poses the main threat to 
protected areas in the United States whereas 
deforestation is the main threat in developing 
countries."

"Wilderness areas enjoy the highest level of 
protection, but that does not limit development 
in their surroundings. In 2000, 20.5 million 
housing units were within 50 km of a designated 
wilderness area (18% of all housing units in the 
conterminous United States), compared with only 
4.4 million (12%) in 1940 (Fig. 1). Wilderness 
areas also exhibited the highest housing growth 
rates in their immediate vicinity (Fig. 2). The 
number of housing units within 1 km of a 
wilderness area grew from 9,400 in 1940 to 54,000 
in 2000 (474% growth)."

"If long-term trends continue, another 17 million 
housing units will be built within 50 km of 
protected areas by 2030 (1 million within 1 km), 
greatly diminishing their conservation value. US 
protected areas are increasingly isolated, 
housing development in their surroundings is 
decreasing their effective size  Š   "

-- 
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  "Real estate speculation must be as old as the 
land -- in the United States, it is certainly as 
old as the frontier  -- and the first bad bank 
loan was no doubt made around the time of the 
opening of the first bank."

"Still, the boom of the 1980s was unique. Not 
only did creditors lend more freely than they had 
in the past, but the government intervened more 
actively than it had ever done before to absorb 
the inevitable losses."

James Grant.
Money of the Mind : Borrowing and Lending in 
America from the Civil War to Michael Milken. 
Introduction, p.5.
============================================================================
"Climate scientist James Hansen has suggested 
that 350 ppm was the concentration beyond which 
it was unsafe to go."   "Unquestionably we are 
beyond where we should be."

Thomas E. Lovejoy, Tim Flannery and Achim Steiner
International Herald Tribune
Monday, October 27, 2008
=========================================================
"The tendency for success to breed complacency 
and recklessness is as ingrained in financial 
markets as it is in any other walk of life."

"Banks: Barbarians at the vault."
The Economist, May 15, 2008
================================================
"Man Š  is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst 
of his infinite responsibilities, without help, 
with no other aim than the one he sets himself, 
with no other destiny than the one he forges for 
himself, on this earth."

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
========================================================
"The atmospheric engine is subtle in it operation 
and delicate in its adjustments.  Extra inputs of 
energy Š  can have significant and far-reaching 
consequences."

Singer, Fred S. "Human Energy Production as a 
process in the biosphere," Scientific American, 
September 1970.




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