As part of an enjoyable and high-value conversation yesterday, Darla encouraged me to get on your email list. I hope this does it!
I am an economist by training, with a first specialty in political economy, technical specialties in the economics of technological change and in the economics of infrastructure systems. I understand forests (including meadows!) as complex infrastructure systems, with the possibility of value-increasing interactions with traditional infrastructure systems. As a long-time close student of the Lorax, I recognize the experience of enormous harm from past interactions with these systems... Both the potential efficiencies, and the history of harm, illustrate the economist's principal to get the prices right. A favorite question, with a currently undefined answer, is "what is the right price of atmospheric carbon?"
We share a high degree of congruence of views. I have met several of you, primarily during my excursions downriver to Quincy. My main interests are (1) in my east-side home territory (I am a native of Loyalton, now living in Portola), and (2) improving the values of the forests communities as the best carbon-sink technology we have.
"Forests communities" is a multi-purpose term, including the subsurface ecologies of the woodlands and meadows, and the human populations which since the last ice age have formed, for good and ill, the other elements of our region's ecology. The value of the forests, especially in addressing the climate-change crisis (and as at-risk elements of Earth's carbon cycle systems) makes all of Earth's life members of the forests communities. May as many of our fellow humans as possible recognize as soon as possible their shared membership in our forests communities
The forests communities are critical infrastructure to our planet's recovery from the crisis which we humans have created over the last couple of centuries. In the Feather River country we have both done considerable damage over this time, but also have been pioneers in the recovery. We have much to offer to our friends both downstream and across then larger forests regions, of California and beyond. This work, our work, is extraordinarily important in this time of environmental crisis.
There are immediate and high-value opportunities for collaboration in this program. I believe that Darla's work in launching a new round of planning for the Middle Fork Feather River, currently involving the mobilization of the energies and enthusiasm of her FRC students, is a major contribution and acceleration in this direction. I look forward to supporting and contributing to this work, which is critical to our region and the larger community of interest in the health of the forests.
--Jason
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