Stone-dead and oily - long-term forest management

American Forests, Jan-Feb, 1995 by Lester A. Decoster

This strange title describes the raw materials that stoke our energy hunger and drive public laws and taxes that favor fuels over forests. It's time we stood up for changes. Here's how.

OFF SEWARD, ALASKA, LAST SEPTEMBER, our boat wallowed in steel-gray swells as we watched humpback whales blow their noses (well, that thing in the top of their head works like a nose). Our guides told us that soon the whales would swim about 2,500 miles to Hawaii. The mothers give birth to baby whales and nurse them there (all the while losing weight in the relatively food-sparse waters). Whales go south not for the food but for the warmer, whale-child-friendly environment.

Once the babies are big enough, the whales swim back to Alaska to bulk-up in food-rich Alaskan seas.

I caught myself thinking that there must be a better way to live than commuting 5,000 miles between the nursery and the kitchen. Then realized that I had just traveled almost that far in one day to look at whales!

Now, you may be wondering "Does this story relate to the focus of this series--trees and people?"

It relates.

Those of us living on the piece of the planet called America presently move whale-size amounts of material on whale-size trips every day. We are becoming the land-whales of the planet, but we roam farther and faster, and move the material we need (I'll call it stuff) from wherever it is to wherever we want it. The food in a meal today has traveled an average of 1,400 miles to get to our tables. Care to pick your teeth (discreetly) after the meal? You may do so with toothpicks from Maine or, just as likely, from Japan. We ship wood to Japan; they ship back mint-flavored toothpicks wrapped in paper.

In 140 years we have created a system that brings us whatever we want from wherever it is--most of it stone-dead and oily. We have changed our power base from grass-burner to gas-burner (animal power to cars and trucks). Power available per person has increased 467 times. (I'm talking horsepower here--one horsepower, the equivalent of 746 watts, is defined as the ability to move 550 pounds one foot in one second.) Our reach has multiplied about 40 times: We comfortably move ourselves and our stuff 1,000 miles or more in a day now compared to 25 miles in 1850.

In 1850 wood represented 67 percent of everything we used and was important for heating and cooking. Now 96 percent of everything we use is material other than wood. Total stuff used per person per year adds up to 45,000 pounds--three times as much as in 1850. Eighty percent of what we use is stone or oil, and primarily involves transportation. The 4 percent of our stuff that is wood is mostly lumber, plywood, and particleboard. Paper from wood accounts for only 1.3 percent of the materials we use, although we make this element seem bigger by discussing it incessantly.

There are 11 times more of us now than in 1850, so using three times more stuff per person per year combines to produce an effective increase of 33 times in total stuff used.

Stick with me here (you may have to read this twice). We have reduced our use of wood individually to one-fifth the levels of 1850, but total wood use has doubled because there are 11 times more of us now.

The lesson from this mass of math is that the increasing total numbers of people quickly negates savings from the decreasing per-capita use of raw material.

We are not going to "save" our way into more greenery as long as population growth outstrips savings. Also, saving won't cut it (to pun a little) if our new uses of resources and our public policies on land use and taxation continue to force land out of growing forests.

In no way do I mean to suggest that we shouldn't preserve natural areas and conserve and recycle wood products, including paper. I do suggest that saving forests from harvests and recycling forest products are not enough to ensure adequate, healthy forests that provide all the things we need from them.

Our conversion from grass-burner to gas-burner bought forests time by reducing the amount of land needed for crops, allowing us to let millions of acres of land cleared for cropland revert back to forests. Nature and time did most of the work. We assisted with fire protection and the planting of billions of trees. As a result, the amount of forest land in America has been quite stable since 1920.

We are very green today. But we are zoning, taxing, and regulating away the ability to hold land long-term for deliberately growing forests (working forests) for all their benefits. We are discriminating against working forests with policies similar to those that have moved so much manufacturing out of America to other countries.

WE HAVE PUT 180 million acres of forest into no-harvest protection through public purchase and legislation, and a considerable amount more will never see harvest because of location, public pressure, and regulation. These are areas of beauty, wilderness, wildlife preserves, and parks--wonderful things, and we need them, but it leaves us with less than 500 million acres of potential working forest. That's just about the amount we need at present population and wood-use levels if we want to maintain healthy, diverse forests and harvest gently, aesthetically, slowly, and sustainably.