NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #18/NN_1992_18.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/5756

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Subject: RAPE OF THE NATIONAL FORESTS (Part III)
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Date: 13 Aug 92 18:48:01 GMT
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     A   C a s e   S t u d y   I n   M a r k e t   F a i l u r e
     ===========================================================


THE HANDLING of the ancient forests by the timber companies and Forest
Service provides a model case of applied market failure.  It is now
conventional economic truth that the market does not work properly
when there are significant positive or negative externalities, as, by
definition, the market ignores these _if it can get away with it_
(dumping wastes into the river, ignoring product safety threats,
etc.).  The handling of the national forests by private timber
companies has involved major societal losses of both types.  The
positive externalities foregone have been the aesthetic, biological,
ecological, and recreational values of the intact forests.  As these
can not be capitalized on by the market, which in the famous language
of Oscar Wilde, "knows the price of everything, the value of nothing,"
they are entirely ignored by private lumber companies.  Negative
externalities have included soil damage, erosion, waterway silting and
flooding, the destruction of biological life, and the adverse effects
on nearby communities from commercial logging and forest removal.
Again, as these are social costs not borne by private entrepreneurs,
the market ignores them.  Economic logic tells us, in short, that the
private market will drastically overcut ancient forests in the
interest of realizing the price of lumber, period.

It is the theoretical function of government to offset the effects of
market failure by taxes, subsidies, and by making public goods off
limits to the market.  The tragedy of the national forest story is
that the privatization of _government_, the capture of government
agencies supposedly serving the public interests by market interests,
has undermined the proper government role and made the relevant
government agencies into _servants of market failure_.  This has
rested on national media connivance in refusing to make this
perversion of function, and the relevant facts and issues on national
forest events, into important news stories regularly presented to the
public.



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         T h e   D o u b l e s p e a k   C o r n u c o p i a
         ===================================================


THE ONLY "sustained yield" in the system of privileged looting of the
national forests has been profits to lumber companies and the
proliferation of doublespeak.  Perhaps the most remarkable doublespeak
feature of the rape of the national forests has been Reagan's, Watt's,
Bush's and the timber companies' ability to wrap themselves in the
flag as great American patriots, while they leveled the American
patrimony and destroyed the material and aesthetic basis for their
claims of American greatness.  From those "seas to shining seas" there
are amber waves of grain, but a rapidly dwindling wilderness and
ancient forests.  The doublespeak comes frequently in the
rationalizations for unconscionable policies that require obfuscation.
Under Nixon we had a proposed "National Forest Timber _Conservation_
Act" [emphasis added], which would have applied "intensive management"
techniques to the national forests; i.e., it would have increases the
cut by 60 percent!  Two years later the patriotic and conservation
minded Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon introduced "The _American_
Forestry Act of 1971" [emphasis added].  Shepherd noted that the word
"environment" appears more than a dozen times in this bill, which
posed a deadly threat to the environment.  Nixon also came out
strongly for clear cutting on the ground that this would avoid the
damage to adjacent trees which would result from selective cutting,
and would allow "new growth" in the national forests!  Jack Shepherd
noted the analogy to Nixon's (and the United States') "saving" role in
Indochina: "the national forests must be cut down in order to save
them."

After ripping up the magnificent old forests, and badly damaging the
soil in the process, the timber barons and Forest Service regularly
put up signs pointing to their reseeding efforts and the "new growth"
prospects, a la Nixon's cutting down the forests to save them.  One
sign, shown in a photograph in Shepherd's _The Forest Killers_, sits
overlooking a barren landscape, and reads: "Overmature Timber
Harvested In Full Compliance With California Forest Practice Laws and
Regulations.  Helicopter Sowed 21 Million Seeds To Start A New Forest
January 1965."

Other hypocrisies abound.  The Forest Service regularly claims that
its depredations in collusion with the timber companies are a bonanza
for wildlife (by making plentiful "openings" in the forest),
contribute to biological diversity, and even improve water runoff by
getting the water into the streams rapidly instead of its just sitting
in the rich forest humus!  Although obligated by law to service
"multiple uses" without discrimination among them, the Forest Service
is a timber cutting agency as measured by resources deployed,
attitudes and orientation, and organizational dynamic.  The other
uses, like recreation, fishing, and ecological-biological service are
not only marginalized.  Insofar as they compete with the timber cut
the Forest Service treats them as a threat.  But as it diminishes the
value of the national forests for alternative uses, the Forest Service
makes hypocritical gestures that are the essence of doublespeak.  It
uses monies from the removal of forests to study the habits and
requirements of a threatened woodpecker, as if it were really
concerned in the least with the woodpecker, whose habitats it
systematically destroys.  It is as if the Nazis used revenues from
slave labor camps employing gypsy labor to study the history and needs
of gypsy populations.


               =======================================
               D o u b l e s p e a k   A p p e n d i x
               =======================================

ALLOWABLE CUT.  The maximum volume of trees that congress will _allow_
to be cut this year; the minimum volume that _will_ be cut.

ANCIENT FORESTS.  Stands of overmature trees urgently in need of
removal in order to "save" the forest. (See Overmature and Save.)

FOREST SERVICE.  A government agency legally responsible for serving
the general public and for assuring "multiple use" of the national
forests; in reality, designed for "getting out the cut."

INTENSIVE MANAGEMENT.  In Forest Service lingo, increasing the
allowable cut (q.v.).

HARVEST.  In timber industry-Forest Service lingo, cutting down
thousand year old trees while giving the impression that this is like
the annual picking of apples or a crop of corn.

MULTIPLE USE.  In Forest Service lingo, timber, plus the others.

NATIONAL FOREST.  A large volume of board feet needing harvesting in
the national interest (see Harvest and National Interest).

OVERMATURE TREES.  In timber company and Forest Service lingo, trees
which may live in splendor for another 500 years, but which would make
damned fine lumber today.

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