Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 18:26:18 +1300
To: Richard Walden <rsw@azpecans.com>
From: Jean Harris <jean.harris@stonebow.otago.ac.nz>
Subject: Green Valley
Dear Me Walden,
I implore you not to build a golf course at Green Valley. There are, of course, many ecological and environmental reasons why a golf course should not be built there, but focus on the practical and financial reasons why it shouldn't be built. Consider the economic downturn which is now underway despite the election of Bush, whom the financial markets favored. In the next few years the US will face many consequences from loosing its geodestiny and the restrictions decreased availability of oil and natural gas will place on US industry. With the coming pinch from the loss of US energy resources, far fewer people are going to be very interested in golf. With the collapse of such luxury markets this land will be of much more value as farmland or, better yet, for forestry. [Eugenie has the fortune to live in one of the few countries with an excess of carrying capacity. Part of that is due to the fact that leaving ground alone results in a forest regrowing. Here, in the desert, it results in a few thorned cactuses and the mesquite, which grows at less than a twentieth of the rate of average forest lands, because of the shortage of retained rainfall.] You would not like to be like the Polynesians of Easter Island who cut down all their trees and were left without canoes to fish in. The preservation of Green Valley represents your canoe to a viable economic future.
Sincerely,
Jean Harris
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eugenie L Harris, PhD
jean.harris@stonebow.otago.ac.nz
Research Fellow Vascular Research Group Surgery
Department Phone: +64 3 474-0999 ext. 7474
University of Otago Fax: +64 3 474-7622
PO Box 913 Dunedin, New Zealand
--------------------------------------------------------------------------