conserving ours, consuming theirs

[Chriznitch]

I was sorta getting at this in the "Wild Sky" thread but felt that this topic deserves its own...

this is a great speech that I saw last year and should open some eyes:

 

Conserving Ours, Consuming Theirs

 

Tom Knudson

Sacramento Bee

 

I'd like to begin this afternoon in a setting familiar to most of you - and to millions of California, as well: in a traffic jam.

 

There I was, creeping along Interstate 80 - six lanes of steel, chrome and bad air - when I looked up and saw a bumper sticker on a Toyota Camry in front of me. It said: "Inspiring Generations to Live in Balance with Nature - Audubon."

 

That bumper sticker got me thinking.

 

A Toyota Camry gets 22 miles per gallon - city driving. Let's say this one is driven 12,000 miles a year - average for the U.S. That's 550 gallons of gas, the equivalent of 27 barrels of oil - for just one car.

 

But the Audubon Society is no friend of the oil industry. It opposes drilling in Alaska, off the California coast and elsewhere. Where, then, I wondered, did the oil to fuel that Camry come from?

 

Something else caught my attention. Almost certainly, the driver of that car lived in a wood house. Let's say it was a typical California home. The walls would be framed with Douglas fir. Sheets of plywood or `oriented strand board' would be nail-gunned to the outside of those walls. Out the back door, there would be a redwood deck, maybe a redwood hot tub.

 

But Audubon is no ally of the timber industry either. It opposes many kinds of logging in California, where the harvest of wood has dropped more than 65 percent since 1988. (1) Where, then, did the wood to build this driver's home come from?

 

It is experiences like that, which set me on a quest to see where, in fact, the oil, wood and other raw materials that California conserves at home - and consumes from afar - originate.

 

In my profession, there's a phrase reporters learn early: "Follow the money." I wanted to follow the fossil fuel, to track the two by fours. I didn't know where the journey would take me but I thought it would be interesting.

 

But there was a problem. Crude oil and lumber - unlike dollar bills - don't have serial numbers. There is no paper trail that leads from gas station to drill rig, from lumberyard to logging site. But there were clues. On a government, I found reports showing that California, like the U.S., was increasingly dependent on foreign sources of crude oil. (2) They spelled out which countries shipped the most oil to California and charted the flow over time. From lumber salesmen, I learned that California was dependent on foreign lumber, too. To get more information, I did some legwork: I walked the aisles at Home Depot stores, reading company logos on stacks of wood.

 

Eventually, I began to travel. For crude oil, I went south to Ecuador, home of a surprisingly productive oil field and the second-largest source of foreign oil for California. For wood, I went north to Canada. In both places, I found myself traveling through forested landscapes - not just any forests but two of the most majestic tree-covered terrains on Earth: the Amazon headwaters in Ecuador and the boreal forest in Canada.

 

The first thing I noticed was how differently resources are managed in those places. In California, we take great pains to protect forests from logging. In Canada, they go to great lengths to cut them down. In California, we safeguard wild lands from oil development. In Ecuador, they lease them to oil companies. But there were other contrasts, too.

 

California is home to one of the most affluent, urban concentrations of consumers on Earth. But resources to build California's homes and fuel its cares are being extracted from rugged, frontier regions where work is scarce and wages - and from lands important to the survival of indigenous cultures.

 

In all, I toured four Canadian provinces and bounced and rattled on bad roads across what seemed like half of Ecuador. These were journeys of discovery, dismay and shock. In Ecuador, I visited with rain forest tribes whose lives and culture had been torn apart by oil exploration. I met with peasant farmers who told me petroleum-contaminated surface water had sickened their children and poisoned their livestock. When I asked one woman about oil, she lifted her blouse to reveal a nasty red welt. "This is what happens," she said. "When you take a bath in the river, it creates boils on your skin, like this."

 

In Alberta, Canada, I walked with Dave Donahue through a region where he once trapped fisher, marten and squirrel. Now his trap line is a maze of clear-cuts - the aftermath of logging for `oriented strand board' panels used in housing construction. The wildlife is gone. In Ontario, I went on a hike with former Ojibway chief Steve Fobister. On land important to his people for hunting and plant gathering, we walked across a forest sheared of trees to make newsprint. "This is devastation," Steve told me. "You can't even hear a bird in a clear-cut. You can't even find an insect. Everything is dead."

 

On this trip, I began to see that conservation in California - and much of the U.S. - has a blind spot. Our passion for protecting natural resources at home - while consuming them from afar- is backfiring on the global environment. It is shifting the pain of producing oil, wood and other resources to distant corners of the planet, to places conveniently out of sight and out of mind. California, I concluded, was the state of denial.

 

 

My point is not to criticize conservation but challenge the narrowness of its vision. Conservation is local but consumption is increasingly global. You can put a fence around forests in California. But you can't put a fence around all the forests in the world.

 

"We Californians are really not very good conservationists - we're very good preservationists," Bill Libby, a professor emeritus of forestry at the University of California, told me. "Conservation means you use resources well and responsibly. Preservation means you are rich enough to set aside the things you want and buy them from someone else."

 

There's a phrase that has come to define this me-first school of conservation.

 

You all know it, I'm sure: NIMBY - "Not in my backyard." But in California, NIMBY is now old-fashioned. New styles of preservation are taking its place.

 

There's BANANA, for example. How many of you have heard of BANANA? It's not just a fruit. It stands for: Build-Absolutely-Nothing-Anywhere-Near-Anybody. The other day, I heard a new one: NOPE. Anybody know what nope stands for? Not-On-Planet-Earth.

 

Today, I want to share with you parts of my journeys, to connect the dots from California gas station to Amazon oil spill, from Sacramento Home Depot to Canadian clear-cut. But first, let's take a look at the two forces that set me on my travels: conservation and consumption.

 

Conservation has deep roots in this country. Long before other nations recognized the importance of protecting natural resources, the U.S. was setting aside land for national parks, creating a national forest system. Reverence for nature runs through our literature, through writers from Henry David Thoreau to Edward Abbey.

 

It drives our non-profit groups, too. For more than a century - when government has failed to prevent resource damage - non-profit groups have stepped in to lobby for nature. One of the first and strongest voices was a California creation, the Sierra Club, formed in 1892 and led by one of America's first celebrity tree huggers: John Muir.

 

Over the past century, millions of acres of land have been added to the nation's conservation warehouse. We have national parks, national wildlife refuges, national seashores, national grasslands and national monuments. On national forests, there are wilderness areas and wilderness study areas. We have county parks, state parks and open space corridors. Even when land isn't set aside for protection, there are laws that limit how it can be used - the Endangered Species Act of 1973 is one example, the National Forest Management Act of 1976 is another.

 

As our love affair with conservation has grown, so has the size and number of non-profit environmental groups. Today, there are more environmental groups than ever. Like the nature they seek to protect, these groups occupy specialized niches. Some focus on forests, others on oceans. Some are local, others regional. There is the Grand Canyon Trust, the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity, the League to Save Lake Tahoe. Despite such diversity, however, these groups have a common denominator. They are focused on protecting things. And almost always, those things are in their backyard.

 

In California alone, state and federal laws and policies - backed by environmental groups - have eliminated or sharply reduced logging on 10 million acres sine 1992 - an area 13 times larger than Yosemite National Park. (3) In the California desert, 3.5 million acres were declared wilderness in 1994 - an expanse half again the size of Yellowstone National Park.

 

But as conservation victories, have grown, something else has been growing, too: consumption.

 

We Americans are voracious consumers. On average, we consume twice as much wood per person as other developed nations, three times the average for the world as a whole. (4) We have five percent of the world's population but consume 25 percent of its oil.

 

 

Let's take a quick look at the trends, using the first Earth Day, in 1970 as a benchmark. Since then, U.S. consumption of lumber has jumped 66 percent, from 34 to 57 billion board feet - a record high. (5) Over the same period, the average size of a single-family home in the U.S. has grown 40 percent, from 1,500 to 2,100 square feet. (6) Since 1970, America's consumption of oil has increased 43 percent, from 14 million barrels a day to 20 million - another record. (7)

 

Not so long ago, we used less - a lot less. Yes, there were fewer of us. But people saved more. They had seen the stock market crash of 1929, lived through the Great Depression of the 30s and war rationing of the 40s. When I was growing up, I heard a phrase that seems almost old-fashioned today: Waste Not, Want Not. Today, new sayings are in vogue: "Shop 'Till You Drop" - "He Who Dies With The Most Toys Wins."

 

It's not just oil and wood that we're devouring. It's most everything else, too. In 1998, the U.S. per capita consumption of steel, aluminum, Portland cement and masonry cement and plastics was 3.2, 6.9, 1.5 and 6.4 times higher respectively, than global per capita consumption. (8)

 

 

Largely because of its size, California is a showcase of consumption - a microcosm for America. Since 1980, the number of freeway miles driven per year in the state has leaped 97 percent from 88 to 173 billion. (9) We consume more gasoline - 15 billion gallons a year than any other state. One of every eight California motorists drives a sport utility vehicle. Our governor drives a Hummer.

 

We are big-time wood consumers, too. Since 1998, the number of houses built in California has jumped from 112,000 to 170,000 a year - up about 50 percent. (10) Overall California devours nine to 10 billion board feet of lumber a year - about 15 percent of the national total - the equivalent of about 70 two-by-fours for every person in the state.

 

"We conserve like mad - and we consume like mad," Libby - the California forestry professor told me. "There's a disconnect going on."

 

The collision of conservation and consumption has gone largely unreported by the news media. But it's not escaped attention elsewhere. Two years ago, a paper in Harvard Forest addressed the issue in direct terms.

 

"As a nation of environmentally aware citizens, the U.S. champions the protection of nature, especially within its borders. Notably and somewhat hypocritically, this protectionist attitude often fails to address the link between high levels of domestic resource consumption and the unavoidable impacts that this imposes on the global environment…

 

"Well-intentioned environmental activism may generate unintended environmental degradation. Natural resource preservation is but an illusion if it only serves to shift the source of resources, especially to locations where extraction in less environmentally sound." (11)

 

Others have expanded upon the theme, such as James Bowyer at the University of Minnesota and Roger Sedjo at Resources for the Future. But you have to dig deep to find their work. You don't hear about this stuff on NPR or the evening news.

 

The earliest voice I've found is a surprising one: Aldo Leopold, author of A Sand County Almanac, disciple of the science of ecology - the idea that nature is a web of connections, a concept he hoped would blossom into a "land ethic" in the U.S.

 

But Leopold was also a forester. He knew that conservation and consumption are linked, too. Way back in 1928, here's what Leopold said:

 

"A public which lives in wooden houses should be careful about throwing stones at lumbermen, even wasteful ones, until it has learned how its own demand [for] lumber help cause the waste it decries."

 

And he went on to say: "The long and short of the matter is that forest conservation depends on the intelligent consumption, as well as intelligent production, of lumber." (12)

 

Today, Doug MacCleery, a policy analyst at the U.S. Forest Service, suggests we need a consumption ethic to go along with Leopold's land ethic.

 

Consumption is "one area we all can act upon that could have a positive effect on resource use, demand and [land] management," MacCleery said in a speech five years ago. But he added: "Evidence that no personal consumption ethic exists is that a suburban dweller with a small family who lives in a 4,000 square-foot home, owns three or four cars, commutes to work, alone in a gas guzzling sport utility vehicle and leads a highly consumptive life style is still a respected member of society. Indeed, his or her social status may even be enhanced by that consumption." (13)

 

What are conservation groups saying about consumption? Often - not much. Yes, they've lobbied for gas mileage and wind, solar and hydrogen energy. And that's important. But they don't say much about wood. Overall, the focus is still on saving things.

 

Not long ago, I leafed through a stack of environmental magazines. I saw headlines like "Paradise Found - Three Million Acres of New Wilderness Discovered in Utah" and "Wildlands Wish List - Congress Has a $900 Million Fund for Purchasing New Parklands." But I saw little about America's hunger for two-by-fours.

 

Some groups even fuel consumption with a fundraising gimmick: environmental credit cards. Believe it or not, there really is such a thing. Recently, an offer for one arrived on my doorstep from the World Wildlife Fund. There were pictures of tigers on plastic, whales on plastic and pandas, too - but no mention of the power of consumption to degrade wild places.

 

Consumption is the orphan child of environmental issues. Nobody wants to deal with it. It's more effective to focus on wolves, pandas and pretty places. With consumption, you can't point a finger at a company or a politician. You must point a finger at society - and your members.

 

Perhaps the biggest clash between conservation and consumption was the decision to protect spotted owl habitat here in the Pacific Northwest. That action was hailed as a conservation victory. But it had impacts that rippled around the world.

 

Japan, a major buyer of logs and lumber from the Pacific Northwest, began purchasing more wood from southeast Asia, home to biologically diverse tropical forests and some of the highest rates of illegal logging on Earth. As lumber prices soared, New Zealand began cutting more trees.

 

Libby was in New Zealand at the time. "Price were insane," he recalled. "The New Zealanders wanted me to get them a dead spotted owl so they could stuff it, put it in the lobby and genuflect to it."

 

With less wood harvested in the U.S., more began to flow south across the border from Canada. In 1991 - the year of the Judge Dwyer spotted owl decision - Canada imported 11.4 billion board feet of softwood lumber to the U.S. - 25 percent of U.S. consumption. By 2003, Canadian imports had jumped 70 percent to a record 19.4 billion board feet - 34 percent of U.S. consumption. (14)

 

Where in Canada, though, was that wood coming from?

 

At a Sacramento Home Depot, I found a clue: a bright blue stamp on sheets of oriented strand board that said: Tolko - High Prairie, Alberta. A few months later, I found myself outside High Prairie, visiting with a 59-year-old trapper and homesteader, Dave Donahue.

 

Deeply religious, Donahue did not care for Tolko and its OSB. He took me into the nearby woods to show me why.

 

 

Driving down a dirt road in a beat-up truck, we stared at what was left of the boreal. Five years ago, the forest around his home was a shimmering green quilt of old-growth pine, spruce and aspen. There were marten and fisher, waterfowl and songbirds. Now it was shorn and still, a checkerboard of clear-cuts. And that's not all: Oil and gas pipelines snaked this way and that. Canada is a leading supplier of oil and gas to the U.S. - and most of it comes from Alberta.

 

The further we drove, the more Dave's frustration grew. "It's heartbreaking," he said. "I'm a firm believer that God gave us the responsibility to be stewards of the land. This is not about stewardship. This is about greed."

 

The logging sites Donahue showed me were not unusual. Ninety percent of all timber in Canada is harvested through clear-cutting. And 70 percent occurs in old growth, the very habitat protected by spotted owl restrictions in the U.S.

 

Not long ago, Donahue spilled out his emotions in a short editorial. He titled his piece: Americans Wake Up."

 

"Every tree that is of any value is cut by means of clear cut logging and any tree that is of no use to the company is knocked down and left to rot," he wrote. "It is not hunting or trapping that is killing wildlife and their habitat. It's the forest harvesters… But the real culprit is you - our American friends that are buying Canadian forest products."

 

I wanted to hear Tolko's side. Where Donahue sees destruction, Tolko sees renewal. Clear-cuts - a company representative told me - are good for the boreal because they mimics the natural processes of fire. They open up shady, slow growing stands to sun and promote new growth. "There are areas coming back like a green carpet," he said. "It's beautiful. The moose populations are booming."

 

But a recent Canadian Senate sub-committee came to a different conclusion. "There is ample evidence to show that current forest management practices are destroying our legacy, that we are cutting too many trees over too large an area," it reported, adding: "There is a sense of urgency that, at least in some parts of the boreal forest, time is running out for saving some vital functions, such as wildlife habitat, watershed protection and carbon sinks."

 

My aim is not to sort out who is right or wrong. That is not a journalist's job. My purpose is report the conflict accurately, to let both sides have a say and draw attention to a conservation conundrum that has been largely ignored in the U.S. As MacCleery at the Forest Service put it:

 

"Is it better to clear-cut Canada's boreal to save spotted owls in the U.S. I don't know the answer. But my concern is we're not even asking the question."

 

As I traveled across Canada, other questions came to mind, as well.

 

In the boreal, winters are harsh, soils are marginal and trees grow slowly. In California, winters are mild, soils rich and trees grow fast. Does it make sense to spare trees from productive regions while harvesting them from marginal ones? And what about all the fossil fuel consumed to ship that wood to California? If clear-cutting is frowned upon in California, why is it favored in Canada? And what about jobs? Across California, more than 60 mills have closed over the past decade. Is it wise to put people out of work at home while employing them in Canada?

 

It's not just wood that flowing out of the boreal - paper is, too.

 

 

Lots of paper - 26.8 billion pounds in 2001, roughly equal to the weight of every man, woman and child in America. That paper comes in many forms - tissue paper, spiral notebooks, cardboard boxes, Victoria's Secret catalogues. But pound for pound, the largest volume of paper coming out of the boreal is newspaper.

 

In tracking rolls of newsprint to their headwaters in the boreal, I ran into lots of environmental conflict but not much coverage of it. Large U.S. papers - my own included - editorialize on behalf of protecting forests in the U.S. but rarely if ever say anything about logging for newsprint in Canada.

 

"The amazing lack of coverage is no coincidence," one activist told me. "When their own bottom line is on the line, newspapers tend to shy away from coverage that would reveal their complicity."

 

But environmentalists are picky about what they publicize, too. They target big paper consumers like Staples and Kimberly Clark. But they never criticize newspapers. Why is that? The answer - one boreal activist told me - is simple: they don't want to risk offending newspapers because they rely on the press to cover their campaigns.

 

The Bee, to its credit, did report on newsprint logging conflicts, including one in Ontario involving indigenous Ojibway and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, which is owned by the same company that owns the Bee: McClatchy Newspapers. In British Columbia, we traced newsprint used by the Sacramento Bee itself to a majestic old-growth forest important to another indigenous group, the Kaska Dena.

 

 

There was less environmental conflict in B.C. than Ontario. But still, there were issues. I remember talking with Dave Porter, chairman of the Kaska Dena council, about conditions in the remote village of Fort Ware.

 

"The road to the outside world is one of the worst excuses for a road in the world," he told me. "How many millions of dollars are taken out in profits and how much is put back into indigenous communities? A pittance."

 

A big barrel-chested man, Porter folded his arms across his chest as he spoke about U.S. demand for Canadian wood and paper. Americans "have an inherent responsibility to ask questions" about such products, he said.

 

"This is not just about the environment. It's about people. Aboriginal people and their cultures are as endangered as endangered species."

 

Endangered indigenous villages - spectacular forest ecosystems - impoverished frontier communities - I saw all that and more in another natural resource warehouse important to California: Ecuador.

 

The first oil well in Ecuador went into production in 1972 in the country's majestic Amazon rainforest, east of the Andes. Thirty years later, oil's legacy is one of forest fragmentation, diminishing wildlife populations, the decimation of native cultures, poverty, disease and pollution.

 

You can see it in the muddy grid of bad roads, leaky pipelines, abandoned well sites and petroleum-contaminated creeks and swamps. You can hear it, too, in the stories of the people who have settled in the region.

 

Let me tell you about Benigo Martinez, a peasant farmer we met near the oil boomtown of Lago Agrio. When I asked if he'd had any trouble with oil development, he nodded his head excitedly. With a wave, he said: "Let me show you the bones."

 

Benigno led us into a nearby thicket where, sure enough, a pile of bones lay on the forest floor - the remains of Condorito, a workhorse that he said died after drinking oil-contaminated water. "Pobre Condorito," Benigno sighed, poking the animal's rib cage with a stick. "First his stomach bloated. Then he began throwing up. It took him a month to die."

 

In village after village, we heard stories of human ailments, too - people with skin rashes, stomach problems and even cancer they said were linked to oil pollution. I'll never forget Silvio and Luz Calderon. Peasant farmers, they grow corn, yucca, beans and other crops in a small garden near an unlined waste pit - or try to. Like others, they say pollution is withering their crops.

 

"When it rains, the pit fills up and the waste comes right through here," Silvio told me, motioning toward the garden. One day, Luz was thirsty. She drank water from a seep on the edge of the garden. "Immediately, she fell ill with diarrhea and fever," Silvio said. Her skin turned yellow. She almost died."

 

But the most pathetic sight was their son, who stood in the doorway of a one-room cabin not far away. "He is eight years old but looks like he is four," Silvio said. "We took him to a hospital in Quito and lab tests showed he had lumps in his stomach. I'm sure it is the contamination. We can't go on like this."

 

None have suffered more than the indigenous people - rainforest tribes - whose traditional hunting and fishing lands have been opened for oil development, against their will, then settled later by peasant farmers. In Ecuador, the government owns all rights to sub-surface minerals and, historically, indigenous people have had little influence over what happens in the region.

 

Today, the discovery of new reserves is setting off a fresh oil boom in Ecuador's Amazon. Indigenous people not touched by earlier drilling are now in danger. Let me tell you a story from Randy Borman, an Ecuadorian whose efforts to protect the indigenous Cofan people earned him the Field Museum of Chicago's Parker/Bowman Award in 1998.

 

Not long ago, seismologists for an oil exploration firm approached a Cofan village. "First, they brought in several gifts - a whole lot of rice, a couple of pigs and several cases of whiskey. Next they had a big party and they offered villagers helicopter flights. Then they said: Let's negotiate."

 

This is not so different from trinkets and beads offered our American Indians a century and more ago. As one Ecuadorian woman told me: "Just as you had a gold rush, there is a rush for oil here. But this one is coming with more velocity. There's no time for the people to adapt to it."

 

In Sarayacu, a remote Kichwa village threatened by oil development, I found myself surrounded by a sea of painted faces, women nursing babies, men with spears and blow-guns. Fortunately, they were friendly. We even had a grand luncheon that way, with one of my favorite Amazon dishes: smoked monkey soup.

 

I remember walking down a trail with a Sarayacu woman who captured the view of many. "Here everything is healthy and natural," she told me. "If the petroleum company comes, the land will be poisoned.

 

"I will find against the oil incursion until my last days, until I die."

 

I asked Terry Karl, a professor at Stanford University and a specialist in petroleum-producing countries, what she thought of conditions in Ecuador. She said they are not unusual.

 

"The discovery of oil brings the promise of great riches," she told me. "But the reality is it is very closely linked to environmental degradation, the spread of conflict and a wide range of economic problems.

 

"When I visit an oil exporting country with the kind of degradation and poverty you see in Ecuador," she continued, "I can't help but think, `Oh my God - all of this to fuel someone's SUV.'"

 

I wanted to hear from the oil industry, too, so I called Chevron-Texaco. Texaco pioneered Ecuador's first oil boom in the 70s. "I am not going to dispute that conditions in the region are difficult," a company official told me. "But it is hard to isolate one [factor] as a cause of some or all of the problems.

 

"You have to understand this is a region in which there had been a border dispute with Peru," he continued. "The government of Ecuador encouraged colonization in order to pay claim to the region and forced the [oil] consortium to build more roads than it needed."

 

But I heard something different from a former petroleum geologist with experience in Third World countries. Oil companies simply operate differently overseas, he said.

 

"What tends to happen is they use the cheapest technology they can get away with," he said. "In a way, it is sort of shameful."

 

But he continued: "Often they are forced or coerced by foreign governments into using primitive pollution-control technologies. I know that sounds startling. And it doesn't take all the guilt from the companies. But it is a fact that they are discouraged from using more costly technologies because it would take a little bit off the bottom line of the host countries."

 

I wanted to hear the government's side so I tracked down an official with Petroecuador, the national oil company that inherited Texaco's operations. At first, he was cautious. He spoke in generalities. So I kept asking about conditions in the Amazon. Finally, he acknowledged there were serious problems. "The sickness of the people, the poverty of the people, the contamination of the rivers, the loss of biodiversity - this is the product of 30 years of oil drilling," he said. "You can't solve all that in just one year - not even two or three."

 

Much of the oil from this new boom is being pumped to California and world markets through a new pipeline which slices through the Mindo-Nambillo Cloud Forest Reserve, one of the richest bird watching spots on the planet. One day I visited the reserve and saw the brown gash of the oil pipeline corridor under construction. Behind me, people had gathered to protest. One of them sat down on a log and shook his head. "This kind of destruction would not be allowed in the U.S.," he told me. "The government would not allow it."

 

END

 

(1) California State Board of Equalization

 

(2) www.eia.doe.gov

 

(3) California Forest Products Association

 

(4) Brooks, D.J. 1993 "U.S. Forests in a Global Context." Gen Tech. Rep. RM-228 U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station

 

(5) Howard, J.L. 1999 "U.S. Timber Production, Trade and Consumption and Price Statistics 1965-1999." Gen. Tech. Rep. FPL-RP-595. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory

 

(6) American Forest and Paper Association

 

(7) www.eia.gov

 

(8) Bowyer, J.L. 1997. "Global Trends in Industrial Raw Material Demand and Implications for the World's Forest." Rocky Mountain Institute, Systems Group on Forests, Special Report to Mitsubishi Inc. and the Rainforest Action Network [Data Updated to 2000]

 

(9) California Department of Transportation

 

(10) Construction Industry Research Board, California Building Industry Association

 

(11) Berlick, M., Kittredge D., Foster, D. "The Illusion of Preservation, A Global Argument for the Local Production of Natural Resources." Harvard Forest, 2002.

 

(12) Leopold, A. 1928 "The Homebuilder Conserves."

 

(13) MacCleery, D. 1999 "Is Aldo Leopold's Land Ethic Only Half a Loaf Unless a Consumption Ethic Accompanies It?" Presented at Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters Conference, Madison, WI Oct. 1999

 

(14) Howard, J.L. ibid.

[dberdinka]

Thanks for posting. Excellent facts.

[Winter]

The argument that we shouldn't protect our natural resource for future generations because we export these problems overseas is a much argued discussion. Extractive industry often uses this argument to disempower folks that are working to protect our old-growth and drinking water for our kids and grandkids.

 

The reporter in this story failed to discuss all the other conservation work going on around the world in places like BC, the American activists that risk their lives to help indiginous cultures fight the oil companies, market-based solutions that help people make smart choices on where the wood comes from, organiztions like NW Eart Institute that offer training in lowering our consumption, etc etc etc. He questions the value of domestic conservation because of the effects of consumption and the exportation of extraction, but he didn't take any time to discuss or research how American and International efforts are addressing these very problems and whether that would have an impact on the argument that our conservation work here at home is somehow a short-sighted effort. We certainly have more work to do on all these fronts, but he ignored all this work in his article.

[JayB]

It'd be interesting to see consumption versus GDP. Quite a bit of the things that we consume here, we consume in the form of products that are subsequently used around the globe. We consume nitrates that go into fertilizer that is used to make wheat that is subsequently sold overseas, airplanes manufactured in the US are delivered for use elsewhere, etc.

 

Another thing to consider is the assumption that the rest of the world would be better off if the US consumed less of everything. One consideration that is often left out of this analysis is the fact that much of what we consume is produced by countries that are quite dependent upon the sales of the things that we are consuming. Would country X really be better off if we all but eliminated our consumption of the products that drive their economy? Excessive extraction with no protections for the resource and little consideration for the future is obviously bad for the environment, but so is a nationwide poverty so desperate that eveyone is focused on survival alone. Starving people don't seem to give a shit about the environment. If you look around the globe, concern for and stewardship of the environment seems to increase with development and prosperity.

[Bogen]

Yeah, whatever. Buy more wood, and while your at it, are you sure you're getting enough beef?

[Dru]

a nationwide poverty so desperate that eveyone is focused on survival alone. Starving people don't seem to give a shit about the environment.

 

In many places where people are starving, better environmental stewardship would have prevented conditions from deteriorating to the point of widespread starvation.

[barjor]

As long as we consume stuff there will be big business selling stuff. Unless we really want to give up our lifestyle we will continue to rape and pillage weaker countries. I drive 15k /year to climb lonely mountains and hike old growths forest. Does that make me into an environmental hypocrite? Hell yes. People can block logging and fight against corporations as much as they want but unless the average consumer is ready to accept some big changes it will not make a substantial difference. In most cases they would be better of spending their energy on consumer education instead.

 

So in the main post we have this guy traveling around the globe consuming huge amount of fuel and there for he add to the same problem as everyone else. Thats not leading by example. I wounder what he personaly have done to save the enviorment more then complaining about what other people do

Edited March 11, 2005 by barjor

[JayB]

Environmental stewardship requires a functioning civil society with an institutional infrastructure capable of both monitoring and enforcing environmental regulations, which also requires a stable revenue base that's robust enough to fund ministries as peripheral to immediate national function and survival as enforcing environmental regs - which requires a functioning economy.

 

The bottom line is that this notion that ecotopia awaits if we simply reduce consumption seems like one of the great unexamined articles of faith of our time. Reduce consumption and reductions in production will inevitably follow. If growth in production falls below growth in population in a given area, this will normally lead to declining GDP per capita, and in countries that have a sustained decline in GDP per head conservation will become a peripheral concern next to, say, eating.

 

No one would object to the argument that we should use our resources as efficiently as possible and strive to minimize the disruption that the said use causes to the environment. However, in a great many articles that deal with consumption it seems like environmentalism is simply a red-herring, and the real target is capitalism in general, and the lifestyle that it has made possible in the United States in particular.

[Winter]

Commie!

[Bogen]

A few years ago, as I was doing my Zoology degree at the U of Alberta, these topics were quite in vogue. Particularly of interest to this current discussion were the passionate works of several labs regarding the evils of fragmented ecosystems (clear cuts.)

 

The theory itself was, and is very sensible, but you would never have known it to speak to the people at the head of this research. Attending talks given on the subject was frustrating as hell - full of poor science with no room for intelligent critical questioning. I can recall being shouted down and talked over during after lecture question period on several occasions. It was the same sort of passion for truth without substance or fact that I encountered at the "creation science" lectures that I attended.

 

This is not to say that their concerns are not valid. But it was interesting to me years later to figure out why the "fragmented ecosystem" issue was so important.

 

You see, I too grew up hunting and trapping in northern Alberta. I am a product of, and part of that ecosystem. I have been to High Prairie, which is nothing compared to the huge tracts of forest harvested near High Level several hundred kilometers to the north. The largest pile of wood in the world can be seen every winter in High Level, and the growing poplar crop alone stretches to the horizon even when viewed from a helicopter. I also went to Faro, YK once, to see what was then touted as the largest strip mine in the world.

 

The thing is, to see this evidence of man's destructive power, you have to drive or fly past alot of uninhabited, wild boreal forest. By the time you get there, these great works of man seem ridiculously insignificant. Thus the emphasis in the eighties was placed on the impact of fragmanted ecosystem on local fauna. And sure enough, if you look hard enough, the biodiversity changes in an area if you cut down the trees. Never did hear a reasonable validation for these concerns, only that the poor animals have rights too. The arguement of conserving wild lands for our children doesn't hold much weight in Canada, at least not to any one who has travelled the humbling breadth of it. California may be a different story, and rightfully so, though I was amazed at the volume of "wild lands that I saw there when I visited.

 

The point of essay starting this thread seems to be the disparity between consumption and conservation, particulatly by Californians. Of course Americans consume alot. They also produce alot. What do they produce that is of value to the world, that can possibly justify this over-consumption of black gook inside the planet, or all that oriented strand board? An interesting question that deserves more than a passing thought, in my opinion.

 

For the record, oriented strand board is made from faster growing softwood's. Like poplar. The poplar crop around High Level, planted and maintained by the forest companies on land that is of absolutely no other arable use, actually has higher faunal biodiversity than wild boreal forest in the region. It also removes far more carbon from the atmosphere than old growth wild forest, if you care about such things.

 

I am pleased to see that your president is reported to be a staunch supporter of "science-based policy making." I read that the other day and felt a surge of optimism such as I haven't felt in many years. Don't forget, though, that scientists are not immune from "emotion-based policy making."

 

Buy Canadian Beef. And lumber. We don't mind, really.

[nomad]

The solution (to environmental hypocrisy) is to consume less, not back away from conserving the ecosystems in your area. Ride a bike, buy recycled paper and print on both sides, carpool, use FSC certified or reclaimed lumber to build your patio, etc, etc.

I don't know about Alberta, but the ecosystems of the North West are under severe strain. The past century or two of roadbuilding, logging, removal of beaver and large predators, water withdrawls, dam building, introduction of exotic species, wetland filling and development in lowland & riparian areas have made forced native species out of the area or onto the edge of extinction.

 

Bogen said: "I am pleased to see that your president is reported to be a staunch supporter of "science-based policy making."

 

Is this a joke!? What "science" are you talking about?

Edited March 11, 2005 by nomad

[Bogen]

.

 

Bogen said: "I am pleased to see that your president is reported to be a staunch supporter of "science-based policy making."

 

Is this a joke!? What "science" are you talking about?

 

Can't find the original article I read, but here's a start:

 

http://www.world-grain.com/feature_stories.asp?ArticleID=73505

[Bogen]

Yeah, I can't find it. A search through the few news sites I frequent reveals quite a few hits though.

 

The article I read was concerning the ban on canadian cow imports. Bush said that he would veto the ban if it came across his desk, and that the ban was not in keeping with his desire for science-based public policy.

 

Bush nominated both Johnson as head of the EPA and Crawford as commisionner to the US FDA based on their committment to science based policy making.

 

Not saying it makes the world a better place, or even that it isn't some political double-speak. At least they are talking about rational governance.

[Bill_Simpkins]

The world was fine before hippies came around. People canned foods, reused whatever till it was not usable. Stayed in shape because it was more respectable.

Made stuff from scratch=less packaging. Only drove when needed to.

Now all these hippies want to travel, burn candles, drive Subaru's to the Food Co-op and live in disposable houses.

Look at a graph of O-zone depletion vs # of hippies.

 

No really, population is the the mother of this problem. If our population was a lot smaller everyone could drive a hummer and live in a huge wooden house with no problem. However, solving the population issue is much harder than consuming less. The government will not address population because it is self-destuctive politics.

Consumption to some degree is too.

I think with the amount of people in this world we are past the point of no return unless we make drastic changes, which because of greed, probably will not happen.

We doomed ourselfves, just like many other species have when they reach their critical population.

To many deer in a valley, deer die because they eat all the grass.

[Chriznitch]

our prime of humanity comes with the burden of recognition...

ignorance is bliss

[selkirk]

Has anyone gotten the new Patagucci catalog? I can't afford their stuff, but.... Had a very interesting article on the residents of Easter Island. I never realized it was a relatively well populated heavily forested island til we showed up, and stripped it bare.... When the English(?) arrived the island was just barely capable of sustaining it's then small population, and there wasn't a tree or shrub over 10ft tall.

 

Any way you cut it our global society is woefully out of balance and there will come a reckoning. I'm not a believer in the end of the world hocus pocus... but unless we make some drastic changes in the next century, to bring ourselves more in balance, things are going to get really ugly for our childrens, childrens, children.

 

Just like the deer populations.....

 

unluckily were a race of addicts, and addicts rarely change until they hit rock bottom.

[erden]

Had a very interesting article on the residents of Easter Island. I never realized it was a relatively well populated heavily forested island til we showed up, and stripped it bare.... When the English(?) arrived the island was just barely capable of sustaining it's then small population, and there wasn't a tree or shrub over 10ft tall.

 

One explanation of how the island was stripped bare has to do with the numerous Moai stone monoliths. In order to cut these shapes out of rock, and to transport them overland from the quarry to their current places, wood was used extensively. It seemed the islanders just went nuts over this obsession to chain their shores with these Moai. see map

 

So it is suggested, just like you say in the last part of your first paragraph, that the stripping bare happened before the arrival of the white man.

 

E.