Montana Governor Gets Stoned
By Matthew Koehler, Unfiltered 4-08-09
On Monday, Governor Brian Schweitzer emerged from a closed-door meeting at Smurfit-Stone's Frenchtown mill, looked right into a video camera and declared, “If we can harvest 15,000 acres of the 2 million acres of dead and dying [trees] that we've got on federal land in Montana we can keep this mill open.” (see video clip @ http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2009/04/07/news/mtregional/news08.txt)
This is just the latest in a long-line of claims from the timber industry and some politicians that more public lands logging is the solution to the industry's woes, despite the fact that demand for lumber, paper and packaging products is at historic lows and many mills simply cannot even sell the products they currently have on hand.
A careful video viewer will also notice that the governor didn't really seem comfortable making such a profound statement. I wonder why? Could it be because Schweitzer knows that right now on just the Lolo and Bitterroot National Forests there are 15,000 acres worth of timber sales that are already through the environmental review process, with no appeals and litigation slowing them down, that could be logged anytime this summer? Could it be that the governor remembered mid-interview that the Forest Service recently identified $126 million worth of “shovel ready” fuel reduction work on National Forests in Montana and Idaho as part of the stimulus bill? Time will tell if the timber industry will even bid on any of these projects, or if taxpayers will be forced to give away public timber for next to nothing.
What's even more bizarre about Schweitzer's claim is that Smurfit filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January, not because the company couldn't log an additional 15,000 acres of national forests in Montana, but because the economic downturn has greatly reduced demand for Smurfit's products.
To put Smurfit's current financial situation in perspective, in 1998 a single share of Smurfit stock sold for $25.00 a share, today a share is worth three cents, a whopping 99.9% reduction in value. And let's not forget that Smurfit is a large, multi-national corporation with 150 facilities in the US, Canada, Mexico and Asia. If you look at map of their facilities, it's clear that only a small fraction are anywhere near national forests.
To assume that Smurfit's future success depends upon more logging from national forests is as much wishful thinking as it is irresponsible, especially in light of this tremendous economic crisis, which is so clearly rooted in over-consumption and over-development.
Fact is, Smurfit is a large multi-national corporation that has expanded too much. They need a new business model truly based on sustainability, not more public lands logging to do more of the same.
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But the little logging outfits delivering their goods to Smurfit are at some risk of not being paid anyway, if Smurfit does go into bankruptcy. Alas, Montana's little logging outfits have been beat up before by the industries biggies, and our politicians have always been glad to look the other way.
The logging boom of the 1980s was substantially a battle between big firms (think Champion & Plum Creek), in which Plum Creek told the Missoulian that it would be "the" survivor. Our politicians didn't base their re-election campaigns on that scenario, however. Instead, they claimed to be the protectors of jobs for the little guy in the logging industry.
Funny thing about that. Sure, Montana in the '80s saw a logging boom. (In '87, the UM Bureau of Economic Research reported that logs were coming off the mountains and into the mills at record levels.) So, what became of all those little guys our politicians claimed to care about?
Flathead County reported that a major source of job loss it experienced was lost jobs for the folks who run the saws.
Schweitzer is pinning the future of Montana jobs on one of the last major log-buyers in the state, a buyer seemingly on the verge of going broke. Do our rank and file loggers and millworkers really depend on the biggies to the extent that politicians past and present pretend?
If people agree that the earth's climate is changing. If they agree that carbons are a big contributor to this change. If they agree that gases emitted from dead and decaying plant life is also a contributor. Lastly but not the least, if they also agree the fire places carbon and other green house gases into the atmosphere. Then ask your self this one question. If nothing is done about those red trees on the hill sides and forest fires are allowed to become more intense because of excessive fuels in the forests. Are we really concerned about the environment and what impacts it or are we just let it burn and suffer. What are to do when we realize we need to deal with the forest issues and have no infrastructure left. This is not an issue for small minds to fight over any more.
"I don't understand is this thought that the forest products industry is something that should [be] destroyed."
It sometimes looks that way, doesn't it? We might argue
about the why of it (I know I'd say I've never met an
environmentalist who was telling rank and file to vote for
a logging boom). But we can have that argument later.
You're on firm ground in describing increased frequency of
drying, dying forests. Journals I feel I can rely on have all
been reporting evidence that we should expect a lot of
mortality, including substantial mortality by fire. The same
journals (Nature, Science, Geophysical Research Letters,
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, others)
have also been reporting evidence that the fires will be
fierce enough to return very large amounts of carbon to the atmosphere, thus cranking up the heat just that much more.
The amounts can be substantial. During a recent European
heat wave, scientists measured atmospheric chemistry well
enough to add up plant life's release of CO2. They already
had pretty good numbers on how much CO2 was linked to cars and trucks. When they put the numbers side by side, it turned
that in a single summer's heatwave, the plants sighed out as much or more carbon than the entire year's motor traffic.
Eventual policy in response to this situation is still a bit cloudy,
but so far as I know, destroying the timber industry isn't part of it.
Lance
What the article does state and infer is that the current timber industry is, by and large, not based on a sustainable business model...not even close. The economic crisis, which is rooted in over-consumption and over-development, illustrates this point very well.
We are in this economic crisis, not because we logged too little, not because we built too few homes, not because we built homes too small, not because we consumed too little of the earth's resources...but in every case, because of the opposite.
If keeping Smurfit-Stone's Frenchtown mill was really as easy as giving them another 15,000 acres of public lands to log (as Gov Schweitzer insists) then why doesn't Smurfit just go out get the contracts for the 15,000 acres of logging projects on just the Lolo and Bitterroot NF? The reason is that the problem is not too little logging. The problem Smurfit faces is extremely low demand for their products, especially based on their outdated, unsustainable business model. Funny how nobody seems to want to talk about this aspect of the situation, but rather just talk about the logging part.
2003
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" ... we can estimate the severity of the wildfire season a season or more in advance." ---------------------------------------------------
Western Wildfires Linked To Variations In Climate
Science Daily:
<http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/06/ 030616090805.htm>
ScienceDaily (Jun. 16, 2003) — Scientists from the California Applications Program at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, have found a link between variations in climate and the severity of wildfires that spans a range of regions and ecosystems across the Western U.S. over the last two decades. In developing the first comprehensive database of Western wildfires, the researchers found that, for particular vegetation types across the West, the acres burned tend to result from a few characteristic patterns in moisture surplus or deficit that develop over a few to several seasons. The type of vegetation is key because it determines the growth of wildfire fuel and how it stores moisture.
2004
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"Montana is the most sensitive, with the models predicting a 5-fold increase in mean area burned over the observed range in climate, the authors write."
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Modest Climate Change Could Lead To Substantially More And Larger Fires
Science Daily: <http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/09/040901091106.htm> ScienceDaily (Sep. 1, 2004) — The area burned by wildfires in 11 Western states could double by the end of the century if summer climate warms by slightly more than a degree and a half, say researchers with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service and Pacific Northwest Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington. Montana, Wyoming and New Mexico appear acutely sensitive, especially to temperature changes, and fire seasons there may respond more dramatically to global warming than in states such as California and Nevada.
More frequent, more extensive fires in forest ecosystems will likely reduce the number and size of patches of older forests, the authors say. Corridors of wild areas between forests, through which species might migrate if their home territory goes up in flames, also could be affected, possibly eliminated.
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2006
More Large Forest Fires Linked To Climate Change
ScienceDaily:
<http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/07/ 060710084004.htm>
"The increases in fire extent and frequency are … most pronounced for mid-elevation forests in the northern Rocky Mountains." "Lots of people think climate change and the ecological responses are 50 to 100 years away. But it's not 50 to 100 years away -- it's happening now in forest ecosystems through fire."