From El Dorado County's Mountain Democrat
June 24, 2002 -- Green movement pioneer disagrees with mission now
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By EDMOND JACOBY Staff writer
SACRAMENTO -- Environmental organizations like Greenpeace, which Patrick Moore helped create three decades ago, have become so adept at using emotion-laden slogans instead of reasoned arguments in the fight over forest management practices that they have effectively trumped science in the public discussion, with dire consequences to come, Moore said at a California Forestry Association luncheon in Sacramento Thursday.
Moore parted company with much of the environmental movement after watching it gain control over the direction of public policy in the waning 20th century, only to steer the developed world in the direction of some very difficult choices in years to come, he said.
Harvesting trees, for example, is a key to reducing the proliferation of greenhouse gasses, he said. Greenhouse gasses, principally carbon dioxide, are blamed by most environmental scientists for global warming, which may or may not be occurring depending on who interprets available data.
But there are economic consequences as well. In California, despite increased rates of population growth over the past decade, the timber harvest has declined by about half in just five years. According to reports from the California Forest Products Association, almost 83 percent of all the wood consumed in California is imported. Much of it comes from parts of the world where environmental controls are lax at best, Moore said.
The 2001 timber harvest in California was just 1.6 million board feet, while the state's forests boast some 340 million board feet of available timber. The harvest was less than one-half of one percent of the total.
In a book titled Green Spirit: Trees are the Answer, Moore argues that "perhaps the most dangerous myth that has been created in the war of words over the environment is that human activity is somehow 'unnatural,' that we are not really part of nature but apart from it."
The economic impact of the reduced timber harvest on California is stark: Lost jobs, lost income for companies, higher prices for lumber and building materials, and higher prices for products that heavily depend on wood, such as homes.
According to Moore, the impact of reduced reliance on wood for building projects leads to other economic consequences as well.
For example, he said, the use of steel and concrete, where formerly wood was the building material of choice, leads to an increase in the consumption of fossil fuels to manufacture them. That, in turn, raises prices unnecessarily. But more than just raising prices, he said, the burning of fossil fuels feeds the greenhouse gas problem and contributes to air and water pollution.
"And it doesn't make sense from a policy point of view," Moore said.
"Public policy now encourages the use of wood alternatives that require fossil fuels to produce, yet government policy also is to reduce the use of fossil fuels," he said.
"You can't do both," he noted.
Besides, he said, there is no logical reason to want to reduce the cutting of forest areas.
"The environmentalists keep telling us how the forests are disappearing at an alarming rate," Moore said.
"But that just isn't so. In the U.S. alone, the timber in our forests has increased from 17 to 23.5 billion cubic meters since 1953," he said.
Moore said that environmentalists take as gospel the assertion that old growth forests should be considered sacrosanct, when in fact some old growth forests actually need cutting.
"Biodiversity is the principal issue in the argument about old growth versus new growth harvesting," he said.
Forests are a repository for atmospheric carbon dioxide, which means that forest growth is a mechanism for reducing the putative cause of global warming, Moore asserted.
But forest carbon balance isn't just a matter of how much carbon is locked up in the forests. Carbon dioxide is a building block of trees, as it is of all living plants. They breathe carbon dioxide the way people breathe oxygen, and young, growing trees, while not holding as much carbon within them, consume more carbon dioxide than old trees do, Moore said.
"Old growth forests represent a high carbon account balance," Moore said.
"The young growth forests have high carbon flow rates," he said.
Nor is the old bugaboo, clearcutting, the evil beast environmentalists claim it is, Moore said.
"It's not logging or clearcutting per se that causes damage to the environment," he said, "but how, when and where trees are cut."
Protecting soil, enhancing salmon streams and increasing wildlife habitat actually requires a much wider view of forestry than merely the question of whether to permit clearcutting.
And he differs with most environmentalists on the question of whether forest harvests might lead to species becoming extinct.
"The environmentalists keep telling us that species are going extinct at an alarming rate," Moore said.
"One-half to two-thirds of the species of animals on the earth will disappear by the year 2100, they tell us," he said.
"In fact, the rate of species extinction has been going down since the 1930s," he said.
"And think about this: If you follow the environmentalists' logic you have to accept the idea that the least irreplaceable species is us," he said.
Moore said he thinks it strange that the very people who support zero-harvest forestry also support a return to so-called organic farming, which, because it does not rely on man-made high-nitrogen fertilizers, reduces crop yields. With an anticipated growth of world population from the current 6 billion to as many as 9 billion in 2050, reduced agricultural productivity will mean the choice people must make is whether to cut down all the world's forests and convert forest lands to crop lands, or let starvation spread on a massive scale.
"Those same environmentalists say they are in favor of renewable energy," Moore said.
"It's funny, but they're not in favor of the two main forms of renewable energy, wood and hydroelectric power," he said.
"Why isn't there a Manhattan Project for hydrogen fuels and other no-pollution energy sources?" he asked.
Although many environmental lobbies do, in fact, press for the complete elimination of forestry harvests, Greenpeace is not one of them. The organization Moore helped found does favor a policy that prevents harvesting of trees in old growth forests.
Greenpeace describes itself as the "leading independent campaigning organization that uses non-violent direct action and creative communication to expose global environmental problems and to promote solutions that are essential to a green and peaceful future."