Fighting forest
fires
on Wall Street
Commentary
by DICK DORWORTH
If the
Wall Street Journal can be believed, the solution to catastrophic fires
is simple: follow the lead of private timber companies. That’s
unbelievable.
A recent
(June 21) Wall Street Journal editorial offered a simple minded, and, if
the Journal can be believed, simple solution to the catastrophic fires
that have been, are, and will continue scorching the west. The editorial
titled "The Fire This Time" (James Baldwin would have loved
the irony that the age of irony is not dead) suggests that "One
solution would be to follow the lead of private timber companies, whose
forests don’t tend to suffer such catastrophic fires. Their trees are
an investment; they can’t afford to let them burn. Americans should
feel the same way about theirs."
Like many
perspectives found in the Journal, this one reduces the complexity of
life into terms of capitalist economic theory. But the universe is
infinitely more complex (and rich) than any system of theoretical or
practical economics, thank the trees and stars, undammed (undamned?)
rivers and uncollared bears and wolves and, of course, wilderness,
especially forests, even burning ones. A tree is no more an investment
than a tree farm is a forest; and the Journal using the term
"private timber companies" as a manifestation of
environmental, social and financial responsibility is shallow thinking
and bad journalism, even within the loose parameters allowed editorial
comment. A forest is a living entity and a natural resource, not an
investment, and the private ownership of natural resources always
benefits only a few at the expense of the many. The public always loses.
An
isolated quote, blown up and inserted near the top of the page, reads:
"There’s a reason forests on private land don’t burn
down." That was enough to make me want to read the piece. I wanted
to know what that reason was. Alas, not only was the reason not offered,
the quote isn’t in the body of the story, though the clear implication
is that private ownership of public lands will, in itself, solve the
problem of forest fires. Replace Smokey the Bear with Boise Cascade or
Weyerhauser. That certainly should take care of America’s forests for
all time.
While I
often disagree with what I find in the Wall Street Journal, its
standards of journalistic integrity are frequently excellent, and I
sometimes use those disagreements to scrutinize my own perspective and
ideas. I have learned a lot from the turgid prose and conservative dogma
found in the pages of this daily sermon for those whose daily bread is
earned from the sweat of their stock portfolios and clever real estate
investments. It is disappointing and disturbing to see the Journal
downgrade to National Enquirer standards of journalism, resorting to
such a cheap, unsubstantiated (and unsubstantial) reductionism cliché
as "There’s a reason forests on private land don’t burn
down." And, "Before the Clinton Administration limited timber
sales, U.S. Forests helped pay for their own upkeep. Selective logging
cleaned up grounds and paid for staff, forestry stations, cleanup and
roads."
Neither
the selective logging nor more common clear cut logging practices of the
private timber companies in the public forests of America have ever paid
for themselves. It is not the forests, which, after all, were here many
thousands of years before human beings, that are on the public dole and
need to pay for their own upkeep. And what "grounds" have
selective logging by private logging companies ever cleaned up? Whoever
wrote that has either never seen the aftermath of clear cutting or has
the conscience of a shark. And the staff, forestry stations, cleanup and
roads necessary to service private logging enterprises on public lands
have always cost the American taxpayer far, far more than those
companies ever paid back. It is, contrary to the Wall Street Journal’s
assertion, the private logging companies that need to pay for their own
upkeep on America’s forests, not the forests. And they have never done
so.
One can
easily picture a well-fed corporate executive of a private timber
company in his office, cigar in hand, ashes carefully tapped into an
ivory ash tray from the endangered elephants of Africa on top of a teak
desk from the decimated forests of Malaysia, dictating a press release
to be distributed to the sycophants who do his public relations.
"There’s a reason forests on private land don’t burn down.
Flesh it out. Make sure it gets to the usual sources."
It’s
sad to see such nonsense in the Journal, which simplistically lays the
blame for the summer’s fires on the Clinton administration,
"green groups blocking timber sales at every turn," "30
years of environmental regulation," and bad forest management at
the hands of the U.S. Forest Service. Nowhere does it answer the
question: why don’t forests on private lands burn down? Nor does it
offer any statistics, studies, scholarship or any kind of proof or even
justification for such a bizarre assertion. Is it true? I don’t know,
though I doubt it. Apparently, the Wall Street Journal doesn’t know
either.
Nor does
the Journal appear to know, or at least acknowledge, the connection
between today’s forest fires and several years of drought in the West.
While the editorial puts the blame for the forest fires on the previous
administration, environmentalists and what it calls "a bourgeois
bohemian plan to return forests to their ‘natural’ state," it
makes no mention of the catastrophic influence of global warming on the
state of the forests of western America and the rest of the world. It
does not make the connection between the drought of recent years and
global warming, for that requires viewing the world as something more
(and more complex) than an economic opportunity. Nor does the Journal
mention the major role of America’s private businesses in contributing
to global warming. Nor does it point out the Bush Administration’s
ostrich-like posture in addressing global warming.
If the
Wall Street Journal can be believed, the solution to catastrophic fires
is simple: follow the lead of private timber companies. That’s
unbelievable.