Buchenhof-Wald
==============

Monday 26 October 2009 14:03

Don't push it. It's just sad to see how Die
Bürgerinitiative has "Not In My Back Yard" written
all over it and some trigger happy legal people are
willing to take such a minor issue all the way to
the European level. To me it all looks very
symbolic (we're talking about a hundred trees or
so) and has very little to do with the environment
of people who don't own property next to it. Die
Bürgerinitiative side is full of propaganda, while
the Bezirks side is just the normal complex
legalese because it's a complex issue. Not a lot of
people would understand that, but isn't that why we
have democratic representatives in the first place?
The political side probably isn't totally doing the
right thing either - they let the issue become
complex like this - but fighting this on an
emotional and perceptional base isn't very
convincing. Bringing some superficial numbers
regarding CO2 into it on this scale is just
pathetic. And the value of the Wald is mostly
artificial because it just happens to be on this
side of the Hamburg-Pinneberg border, so it appears
special in Hamburg but just a few miles down the
road there is plenty of trees in Pinneberg. And
since I'm not flying all over the world on a
regular basis I don't need to save some trees in
the neighborhood to make me feel good about myself.
It also doesn't help if the people who would get to
live in the Wald would have to live somewhere else
and then instead drive their cars to some wood on a
regular basis.

by Roland van Ipenburg
http://www.xs4all.nl/~ipenburg/blog/posts/dull/2009/10/26/buchenhof-wald/