Actually, I don’t think there is a “big” out there that Bush doesn’t love. Big timber, big coal, big oil, big agribusiness, big timber, big pharma. It’s all part of the misbegottten view that wealth is a top down affair, crumbs dispensed from on high and not built from the bottom up, the end result of the labor of the many.
Moldy Chum, in a blog post entitled Barbarians at the Gate writes about the recent plan to open 3 million acres of the wild Tongass in Alaska to clearcutting (excuse me for being so crass, I believe the proper term is ’regenerative harvest,’ sorry Forest Service, BLM, etc.). Here’s a map of the Tongass.
We need timber. That much is clear. But, these guys seem to be hell-bent on repeating the mistakes of the past. Here in Oregon we live everyday with the results of clear-cutting on a massive scale. Pretty much every forested acre in Oregon has been logged at least once (approximately between 1%-10% of native forest remains) and it shows. Muddy streams, landslides, declining wildlife and diminished salmon runs are the legacy of the systematic liquidation of our public forests. There are other ways to do this–thinning anyone?
The public should also know that while public lands logging is profitable for the industry it often doesn’t pay for you. From the post:
“The new management plan for the Tongass will effectively raise no revenue for the U.S. government, as the U.S. taxpayers will have to pay to build the roads the timber companies need to access the forest. In Connelly’s words, ‘In 2002, the U.S. Forest Service spent $36 million on its Tongass timber sales program, and received back just $1.2 million from timber companies.’”
So, you get to massively subsidize the pillage of your public lands for the privilege of purchasing a couple of sticks from Weyerhaueser or whoever. You pay on both the supply and the demand side of the equation, lucky you. This might be shocking for those of you outside the Northwest. For us, it’s business as usual. Timber sales typically operate as net losses to the taxpayer. The final insult, as salmon inevitably decline, you get to foot the bill for recovery spending necessary because you paid for the pillage in the first place.
They get the mine, you get the shaft. Same old story.
Sickening. It was a great cover story on Nat Geo pretty recently. Like our friend Beagle says… they need boots on the ground. Maybe we could pull a “Friend of the Earth” and lash ourselves to the Tongass. This is one of those stories that kind of overwhelms me because there’s so much to do here in Oregon and the fuckers never stop and they’re everywhere.
It does get overwhelming doesn’t it. I guess being everywhere is one of the benefits of being in power.