What are we protesting this week?

rambling forwards:

From einspein@telus.net Wed Mar 12 08:15:56 2003

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Subject: Too Horrible to Be True: Working Forest Commentary Deadline - 8 days away

Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 08:16:05 -0800

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From: "Einspein"

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Please forward far and wide.

Too Horrible to Be True: Working Forest Commentary Deadline - 8 days away

Right now, the next 8 days will count among the most important times in the history of BC's forests. Next Friday, March 14, is the deadline for public commentary on the government's so-called "Working Forest" proposal (only 7 weeks after they announced it!).

About 100 people have posted their comments on the government website so far, of which over 90% are strongly against the Working Forest. But we need

a thousand more comments - EVERY comment counts now! If you care about our forests, PLEASE take 3 minutes to post your opinion on the website as part of the public record (yes, you can post on the website even if you've already written an e-mail to government - please do so).

You can enter the government's commentary page through the website: http://www.workingforest.org.

The Working Forest is the most sweeping anti-environmental forestry legislation proposed in BC's history. It would create permanent logging zones on 100% of BC's unprotected public forest lands, that is, on 45 million hectares. It would obstruct new protected areas in our forests, whether new provincial parks, scenic viewscapes, drinking watershed reserves, or fish and wildlife habitat protections, as well as First Nations land settlements. It would do so by facilitating the sale of Crown lands to

private logging companies, by increasing the compensation price tag to private logging companies for new parks, by providing a greater legal emphasis on timber extraction that must be considered in all land-use decisions, by designating "timber access targets" that quantify the area of forest that much be made available to logging in each region, and in the worst case scenario, by mandating that protected forests must be opened up to logging in exchange for new forest protections.

It took over a decade, all through the 1990's, with tens of thousands of letters written, thousands of volunteer hours in lengthy public processes, massive protests and the arrest of a thousand citizens in civil disobedience actions, to increase the amount of protection for BC's productive forests from 3 to 8%. By contrast, in 7 weeks, the BC government is planning to give the other 90% to the logging corporations. Only a massive citizens' uproar - including you and I - will stop them now.

- Ken Wu

WCWC Victoria

**************************************************************************

Source: Western Canada Wilderness Society

The significance of what may soon happen cannot be overstated. On the BC Liberal Party's agenda are two anti-environmental proposals that constitute the greatest threats to BC's wilderness in decades: implementation of a legislated "Working Forest" that prohibits any increased protection of our public forest lands, and vast increases in the rate of logging, or the Allowable Annual Cut, that will decimate our ancient forests faster than ever before.

The "Working Forest" legislation was first proposed by the NDP government in February, 2001, but was withdrawn due to a large public uproar. The now-governing BC Liberal Party promises to enact similar legislation by the fall of 2002. The "Working Forest" legislation aims to turn about 25 million hectares of BC's 25 million hectares of "commercially productive and available forests" on our public lands into permanent logging zones. The targeted lands comprise all of our commercially valuable and biologically productive forests on public lands outside of our parks, which protect a meagre 3 million hectares of BC's productive forests.

A key provision in the legislation currently being developed is that there will be a fixed amount of "working forest" in every Tree Farm License and Timber Supply Area (the two main types of logging zones for companies in BC) that will remain the same in area despite any public pushes for new parks, watershed reserves, endangered species habitat reserves, or First Nations treaty settlement. This means that if any valuable forest lands are protected in the future, existing commercially productive forests that are off-limits to logging, such as in parks, riparian reserves, or old-growth management areas, will have to be opened up for logging. BC conservationists will be running on a treadmill, unable to achieve any net increase in protection for BC's richest forests under this law. The legislation is designed to create "certainty" of control over the timber harvesting land base for the giant logging corporations, and to fend off the looming "threats" posed by conservationists and First Nations.

Essentially, this "working forest" legislation constitutes the pseudo-privatization of our public lands. It is fundamentally undemocratic, as it means that no matter how much the citizens of BC want increased protection for our forests in the future, we won't get it.

Increasing the Allowable Annual Cut: Logging Too Much, Too Fast

The single largest problem with BC's logging industry is that it logs too much, too fast. For decades, much concern has been focussed on the dominant method of

logging in BC - clearcut logging - with most citizens in favour of selection logging. While this is an important issue, regardless of the logging method employed, if too much is cut down too fast, the logging corporations will eliminate all of BC's commercially harvestable old-growth forests within a few decades. If we are to maintain our high quality, premium grade old-growth wood, as well as our endangered wildlife and eco-tourism industry, we must drastically reduce the rate of logging to a level that allows for old-growth forests to rejuvenate and hence perpetually exist.

Currently, the amount of wood that the logging corporations can cut each year on public lands, the Allowable Annual Cut (AAC), has been set by the Ministry of Forests as 71 million cubic metres. The Ministry of Forests' (MoF) own calculated Long-Term Harvest Level (LTHL), the sustainable level of logging that would maintain a constant timber supply in the form of tree plantations, is 59 million cubic metres a year. A truly ecological, long-term harvest level would be even lower than this in order to maintain our forests in their old-growth state, rather than in 90 year old even-aged stands. However, even by the MoF's own calculations, the BC government is knowingly allowing the overcutting of our forests by 12 million cubic metres, or 18%, each year.

The BC Liberals plan to further raise the Allowable Annual Cut to as much as 100 MILLION cubic metres a year. In their proposed agenda, the Liberals rationalize that a phase-in of a higher AAC can occur due to "increasing yields," implying enhanced silviculture, fertilization, and perhaps genetic modification on company tree plantations. However, this will simply give a license for the logging companies to cut our wild, old-growth forests faster than ever before - the plantations will be logged only after the high-value old-growth is gone.

Make Your Voice Heard!

Write to your newspapers, your local MLA, and to Premier Gordon Campbell. Each letter, phone call, and fax will let the government know whether they should

even dare to introduce these dangerous policies that threaten our future.

To contact your local MLA, visit http://www.gov.bc.ca/bcgov/popt/mlalookup/

And also write to:

Premier Gordon Campbell

Legislative Buildings, Victoria BC V8V 1X4

premier@gov.bc.ca

__

Ghouly Yours

Einspein

Icq # 130511564

abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth

http://www.livejournal.com/users/einspein/

On this one I felt compelled to reply:

From atratus@gothic.bc.ca Thu Mar 13 11:09:47 2003

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Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 19:09:45 -0000

To: van-goth@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Too Irritating to Be True: Einspein's Cause du Jour (was: Working Forests)

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--- In van-goth@yahoogroups.com, "Einspein" wrote:

> Too Horrible to Be True: Working Forest Commentary Deadline - 8 days away

First off, the deadline has been moved to April 30th:

http://srmwww.gov.bc.ca/rmd/workingforest/index.htm

If you are all so fired up about saving the forests go to the above address and use the contact information to voice your opinion to the government. Better yet, move out of your wood-frame building in the city and go live in a sod hut in the forest.

Urban tree-huggers annoy the living shit out of me. I grew up in a logging town and today I am exceedingly proud to work for a family-owned, BC-based logging company. Our environmental practices set the standard for the industry and several of our initiatives have influenced legislation. Forestry companies, particularly locally based ones, have a bread-and-butter interest in keeping our forests healthy and implementing sustainable forest practices.

So go ahead and whine and otherwise pay lip-service to your cause du jour. I'll go right ahead and continue to help this company produce value that pays your welfare; to help them do the science that strives to understand how to keep the forests healthy and distribute that science to competators, government and environmentalists alike; and help them work with the communities and First-Nations that rely on healthy forests for their livelihood.

It's easy to spout off about whatever-we're-protesting-this-week, prentending to tear down new buildings, and playing the martyr-hero. It's quite another to actually live by your ideals, and work every day quietly contributing to building something better.

-- Atratus

I didn't bother addressing some of the crap in the forwarded post, knowing full well that there'd be no point in a full rebuttal directed at Nancy since she neither inistigates nor follows through with any action. One point in particular is especially annoying the statement "the Liberals rationalize that a phase-in of a higher AAC can occur due to 'increasing yields,' implying enhanced silviculture, fertilization, and perhaps genetic modification on company tree plantations." The company I work for is very actively involved in researching and implementing enhanced silviculture and I've worked for a research lab that actively worked on "genetically modified" trees (by doing such monsterous things as selectively breeding disease-resistant trees and propogating cuttings from trees with desirable disease resistance - the horror!). I could go on at length about forestry practices and research in general, but what really has my goat at the moment is another issue.

This and a some threads on The Smoke Pit(notably this one, and one that referred to this) have, as of today left me feeling particularly annoyed in general at the gits who endlessly pay lip-service to fashionable causes but fail to live up to any consistent ethical stance whatsoever. I laughed at the "Nature Challenge" because I routinely do all the things on the list, not for pie-in-the-sky ooh-I'm-saving-the-world reasons, but because of simple practicality, verging on laziness, and -- far from conventional environmentalism -- a love of urban spaces and large cities.

Reduce home energy use by 10% I live in an old building with limited electrical wiring and lots of natural light, not to mention I prefer the dark and using candles at night. But most of all I'm a cheap and lazy bastard that would rather pay $13 up from on a low-engery bulb that is going to last five years than have to buy light-bulbs all the time and pay higher electricity bills. I simply use what I like and what is cheapest and easiest in the long run.

Choose and energy efficient home and appliance "Modern appliances save more energy", yeah and they work better too. I asked for a new fridge for the simple reason that I'm a cheap bastard and I hate it when food spoils before I have a chance to eat it and I'm too lazy to go shopping every day. If the fridge can't keep a loaf of bread and a head of cabbage edible for a month, it's just a pain in the ass.

Replace dangerous pesticides with alternative "pets are especially vulnerable to the dangers of chemicals" Pheh. My pets are my pesticides: two cats = no bugs or rodents. That simple.

Eat meat-free meals one day a week There is only one reason I do this, I don't like my belly hanging over my belt. For the longest time I simply couldn't afford to eat meat at every meal, and then found that when I could I started getting fat and didn't have the same energy I did when I was just a little hungry all the time. To quote one of my favourite songs, "I don't give a damn that it takes a thousand pounds of grain to make one pound of ham" (High on the Hog, by Clambake).

Buy locally grown and produced food OK, this is not a matter of bioregionalism for me. It is a matter of economic regionalism. I prefer to trade my money with locals than send it abroad wherever possible.

Choose a fuel-efficent vehicle Well, duh! Fuck emissions, I hate pouring money down the filling tube.

Walk, bike, carpool, or take transit As a general rule I walk almost everywhere I go because most everywhere I want to go is within walking distance. See the following point.

Choose a home close to work or school Is one block close enough? I like living in the city. If I can't walk to everything I want to do, I'm too far away. It's a pain in the ass to drag out the car, battle traffic and the gauntlet of squeegie punks. I didn't move to the city from a small town in the middle of the forest to live on the edge of it all and go for walks in the forest. I'm here for the bars, restaurants, cinemas, skyscrapers, stores, and everything else. I moved to the city to live in the city.

Support car-free alternatives Doesn't living the two points above amount to just that? And, hey, it'd be really cool to have a Segway.

Learn more and share with family and friends I just did.

I'm sick of people who are long on talk and short on action. The advice in this post by Isaac on his Dark Vancouver board apply to far more than just clubbing - people need to quit whining and just do something about building what they want. And if one is not willing to put an effort into one's goals, don't whine about how other people are "doing it wrong" and, even worse, don't go around demanding people do things that one isn't willing to do oneself. Put your money where your mouth is. Put up or shut up. Or the very least, just shut up.