Let's make a compromise on the harvest of old growth in Oregon:
If the industry stops cutting and preserves the last 3%, the rest of us won't bring civil suit on the 97% they've already stolen.

If the reader objects to the above use of the word "stolen", consider this: by paying lobbyists to influence the laws regarding timber policy, the industry has been able to create a situation in which the government loses money on the timber program. Road construction and other costs of managing the program add up to more than the industry pays in receipts for the timber. At the same time, the clearcut logging causes massive erosion into the rivers, killing salmon and costing the fishing industry money, and degrading the quality of the drinking water in downstream cities such as Portland, Salem, and Eugene. Finally, the erosion and overheating of the soil due to loss of shade cover degrades the productivity of the timberlands themselves, so that even the industry that is supposedly benefiting from the destruction winds up losing in the end.

And all the while, to add insult to injury, timber lobbyists managed to get the money they do pay for the timber in Oregon to be allocated to the schools. This might sound generous of them, until you realize that they had to pay the money anyway, and by allocating it to the schools they merely make it easy for the state legislature to deny schools other funding sources. This makes the schools dependent on the timber industry, and therefore every time a bill is introduced which would reduce the timber harvest to any degree, industry spokespeople are able to make dire predictions as to the fate of the state's education system and make their opponents look callous and irresponsible.

Maybe I'd understand this better if I was a politician, but it seems to me that the government has as much money as it has and it could spend it on schools or not, whether or not it sells trees. Obviously, reducing timber revenue reduces the size of the state's budget, but to link it directly to the education system is simply to hold the future of our children for ransom against the exploitation of our forests.

I'm in my early thirties, I grew up here in Oregon, I don't have children yet but I expect I will someday, and personally I don't appreciate being told that if I don't fork over the last of the untouched old growth forests in my neighborhood to Georgia Pacific and Weyerhauser, at a loss to the taxpayer, then my kids will get lousy schools. We should ask a lawyer, but I believe in other contexts that sort of argument would be called "extortion".

Peace,
Otter

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