Environmental Paradox

October 23, 2002
Donn Zea

National Forest Products Week, which runs from Oct. 20–26, is a
good time to reflect on America's most startling environmental paradox: 
Even as activists succeed in getting the U.S. government to declare more and
more forestland off limits to tree harvesting, America is destroying more 
forestland than ever before.

How can this be? Easy: If U.S. tree harvesting declines and U.S. demand
for forest products is rising (which it is), somebody has to pick up the
slack. In other words, somebody has to provide the United States and
other developed nations with the wood products we aren't willing to harvest
from our own back yard.

So, who is picking up the slack? Third World nations such as Indonesia,
Cambodia and the Philippines. By not harvesting its forests while increasing
its demand for wood, America has created a domino effect, in which California 
gets its wood from Oregon or Washington, which gets its wood from Canada, 
which gets its wood from some other country, and so on. At the end of the line — picking up the slack created by U.S. environmental policies — are less-developed 
nations where environmental
protections are lax or nonexistent. These nations are more than willing to allow devastation of their forestlands and look the other way.    

In other words, Americans — who are well able to harvest their timber without devastating the environment — are preserving their forests by allowing huge 
tracts of tropical forests in Third World countries to be reduced to scarred 
wasteland. As U.C. Berkeley forestry professor emeritus William J. Libby has 
written, this is like "locating a landfill for an affluent city in a neighboring 
community that needs the money and is willing to put up with the smell."

In the past decade, as U.S. wood imports have grown by about a billion
cubic feet, domestic production has fallen by nearly half a billion cubic
feet. California, which was self-sufficient in wood only 20 years ago,
now imports 80 percent of its forest products.

What is this doing to the environment? According to Mr. Libby, for
every acre of forestland not harvested for timber here, 2 acres must be
harvested in tropical forests of the Third World. The government of
Indonesia, for example, reports that an area the size of the state of
Connecticut is being cleared of forest each year. Forest depletion
deprives native peoples of their primary source of energy for cooking 
and warmth: firewood.

Here in America, we're fortunate not to have to live on that kind of 
subsistence level. But that means we build houses. Wood makes up about
half of a modern home's construction. New housing starts are up more than 4
percent this year, and U.S. homes have doubled in size in the last 20
years — from 1,500 square feet to 3,000. Alternative building products
are not an option, since they require much more energy to produce than wood
and are not renewable.

Growing and harvesting our own trees in an environmentally responsible
way is the best thing America can do for the global environment. But
tell that to many environmental groups — which scream the loudest about 
ThirdWorld forest devastation, while at the same time demanding that 
U.S. forestland be left alone — and their retort will be about how lumber 
companies are propagandizing in order to exploit forests everywhere.

American leadership can solve this dilemma — but not by pointing
fingers of blame. The solution doesn't lie in environmentally irresponsible
harvesting of timber in the United States or anywhere else. But neither
does it lie in cordoning off more and more U.S. forestland from timber
harvesting while turning a blind eye to the environmental consequences elsewhere.

There is more forestland in this country today than there was in 1900.
In California, more than 1½ times the annual consumption of wood is
added as new growth onto existing trees each year, and goes unharvested. It's
impractical to think a state the size of California will ever return to
self-sufficiency. But it's irresponsible not to utilize more of this 
unprecedented forest growth.
      
Moreover, no-cut, total fire suppression policies on federal lands
have created a forest that is dangerously dense, the source of devastating
wildfires experienced in the West over the past several years. Our
forests desperately need thinning, which makes use of our own forests into a
win-win situation for everyone, including Third World nations.

Why can't environmentalists put away their animosity toward private
landowners and timber companies, link arms with the private sector, and
help us use our most sustainable resource in an environmentally responsible way?

We have the answer — the only obstacle right now is politics.

Donn Zea is president of the California Forest Products
Commission.