Saturday, September 15, 2007
Wooden Attitudes
The current solution to global warming, according to our federal government in Canada appears to be the replacement of all light bulbs in our houses with those curly fluorescents, and the softening of our carbon footprint with carbon offset payments. OK...
Let's have a run at one (and only one) of the real culprits - especially here in British Columbia - the logging industry. Presently the provincial government grants licences to a handful of timber companies. These licences allow them five years to make off with as much timber and cash as possible. Operations swoop in on unsuspecting communities and within this short time span, wipe out most of the harvestable wood over large swaths of real estate. Is there any recourse to this type of legal pillage? Of course not. (see the interesting records kept by Sunshine Coast residents at saveourwatershed.com).
But that's for another time. For now let's trace the carbon footprint of such an operation, and it's a damn big foot!
Roadbuilding takes heavy machinery, not just for the articulation of the roads but for the transportation of roadbed materiel to the site. More machinery, to cut the trees (feller-bunchers have become more in evidence in coastal logging) sort it, move it to mill, mill it, transport it to wholesale markets - frequently to the far east where it is further milled to meet local market specs or stockpiled until better market conditions arise- and then to retail markets.
This is a puppy with a huge carbon footprint.
There is a better way and has been for almost eighty years - selective logging. But it is a process that takes at least ten years to see a return on investment. A process that guarantees jobs for decades and not just months. The trouble is, provincial governments roll over every four or five years, the same time span as the logging licences, and no politician is going to create a lucrative environment that might arise at the moment when their political foes might be in power.
Hello?!?
Some things are just too important to be politicized, and this is one of them. Until politicians get this into their heads, we will continue to have publicly owned crown land ravaged and pockets lined with future campaign contributions.
So maybe I'd better light a compact fluorescent rather than curse the political darkness and short-sightedness of our current provincial land use strategies.
Let's have a run at one (and only one) of the real culprits - especially here in British Columbia - the logging industry. Presently the provincial government grants licences to a handful of timber companies. These licences allow them five years to make off with as much timber and cash as possible. Operations swoop in on unsuspecting communities and within this short time span, wipe out most of the harvestable wood over large swaths of real estate. Is there any recourse to this type of legal pillage? Of course not. (see the interesting records kept by Sunshine Coast residents at saveourwatershed.com).
But that's for another time. For now let's trace the carbon footprint of such an operation, and it's a damn big foot!
Roadbuilding takes heavy machinery, not just for the articulation of the roads but for the transportation of roadbed materiel to the site. More machinery, to cut the trees (feller-bunchers have become more in evidence in coastal logging) sort it, move it to mill, mill it, transport it to wholesale markets - frequently to the far east where it is further milled to meet local market specs or stockpiled until better market conditions arise- and then to retail markets.
This is a puppy with a huge carbon footprint.
There is a better way and has been for almost eighty years - selective logging. But it is a process that takes at least ten years to see a return on investment. A process that guarantees jobs for decades and not just months. The trouble is, provincial governments roll over every four or five years, the same time span as the logging licences, and no politician is going to create a lucrative environment that might arise at the moment when their political foes might be in power.
Hello?!?
Some things are just too important to be politicized, and this is one of them. Until politicians get this into their heads, we will continue to have publicly owned crown land ravaged and pockets lined with future campaign contributions.
So maybe I'd better light a compact fluorescent rather than curse the political darkness and short-sightedness of our current provincial land use strategies.
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