Save the greek forests

I am not sure how this is going to help, but I think everyone should vote in the Save our forests petition :)

The petition has already 70.000+ votes, so I guess this may help....

signed! i hope it all works out man :(

signed too!

Good :)

I think in our days we all have to be ecologists but most of all we should convince our rulers that this planet can't stand us for long :)

where are the "Geek Forests"? never heard about...

Maybe they are somewhere in the Silicon valley :)

I think I missed something. Since when are they in trouble?

the woods from silicon valley?

I guess Ronna is talking for the greek forests :)

Ronna check this out : http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=greece+fires&btnG=Search+News

so you get some new hotels there?

Oh thanks. That explains it. I don't feel so outta the loop now :D

I am afraid so....

Are they going to anything about the laws that encouraged "accidental" forest fires? I remember reading that the forests could only be cut for development if they were part of a forest fire. Seemed like an invitation to arson to me. Want to build - start a fire.

Well in Greece the law is actually protecting the criminals, and that is what we want to change.

For instance if you have land with trees, you are not allowed to build there or cut the trees. If someone "accidentally" burn the forest, still you don't have the right to build. BUT you can actually build the burned land because none is going to do anything for it. The only problem you will have after that is that the government wont give you water and electricity, but that's not really a problem for these people as we are talking for a really huge real estate business.

This is very sad, especially in our times where forests are critical for our lives. I hope someone in Greece's government will wake up soon and do what we elected them to do :)

We have a similar problem in the uk on a much smaller scale here protected land that's not part of a national park is given special legal status called "Green belt" in such land its illegal to build or develop on, even digging up to put pipes in requires special permission. But many companies are pressuring councils to reclassify such land as "brown belt" which they are allowed to develop with restraints but once built their is little that can be done, the problem is in the UK we have a housing shortage particularly in  the south as a country in terms of per square mile we are one of the most densely populated countries in the world and certainly in europe, we also have a lot of unsuitable land meaning the green belts around our cities are being eaten up. For some one like my self its not to bad I live in a very rural part of the UK but if you are in London or the south its one large city.

I think a great way to put it in perspective is that in the UK we have special street lights that put only half the light that most other countries generate into the sky, so it takes two UK lights to produce the same amount of light as produced by one light if seen from above (or space) so now http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0011/earthlights2_dmsp_big.jpg
http://www.star.le.ac.uk/~dbl/cfdsdisk/cfdsdisk/Space%20views%20of%20countries/UK%20from%20space%20(NRSC-DMSP%20BAA%20poster).jpg

look at the UK, then double the intensity of the light ;) you can see why we need those street lights.