from The Overstory, Richard Powers
… eyes toward the wilderness … [He] sees slabs of light through the trunks where there should be shadow all the way to the forest’s heart. … [He investigates then] stumbles back through the curtain of concealing trees …
“Have they been clear-cutting, up the valley?”
… “Shit, yeah.”
“And hiding it behind a little voter’s curtain?”
“They’re called beauty strips. Vista corridors.”
“But … isn’t that all national forest?”
The cashier just stares …
“I thought national forest was protected land.”
The cashier blows a raspberry … “You’re thinking national parks. National forest’s job is to get the cut out, cheap. To whoever’s buying.”
p87
[He hires a ride in a small prop plane.]
“Just take me in the biggest circle you can make for the money …”
It looks like the shaved flank of a sick beast being readied for surgery. Everywhere, in all directions. If the view were televised, cutting would stop tomorrow.
p88
[She pursues a forestry degree.]
Soon, she sees. Something is wrong with the entire field, not just at Purdue, but nationwide. The men in charge of American forestry dream of turning out straight clean uniform grains at maximum speed. They speak of thrifty young forests and decadent old ones, of mean annual increment and economic maturity.
p122
[He’s planted 50,000 trees.]
“It’s a start,” Douglas says.
… “Hate to burst your bubble, friend. But you know that BC alone takes out two million log trucks a year? By itself? You’d have to plant for like four or five centuries just to—”
…
“And those companies you plant for? You realize they get good-citizen credits for every seedling you plant? Every time you stick one in the ground, it lets them raise the annual allowable cut.”
p185-6
I’d like to determine the personality factors that make it possible for some individuals to wonder how everyone can be so blind …
…while everyone else is still trying to stabilize in-group loyalties.”
p237
[When they protest the logging, chaining themselves together …]
“When are you people going to grow up and get real? Why don’t you take care of your own business, and let us get on with ours?”
“This is everybody’s business,” Douglas answers.
p244
“People could make more money harvesting mushrooms and fish and other edibles, year after year, than they do by clear-cutting every half dozen decades.”
…
“Then why doesn’t the market respond?”
Because ecosystems tend toward diversity, and markets do the opposite.
…
“How much untouched forest is left?”
“Not much.”
“Less than a quarter of what we started with?”
“Much less. Probably no more than two or three percent. … they’re disappearing—a hundred football fields a day. This state has seen rivers of logjam six miles long.
“If you want to maximize the net present value of a forest for its current owners and deliver the most wood in the shortest time, then yes: cut the old growth and plant straight-rowed replacement plantations, which you’ll be able to harvest a few more times. But if you want next century’s soil, if you want pure water, if you want variety and health, if you want stabilizers and services we can’t even measure, then be patient and let the forest give slowly.”
…
People aren’t the apex species they think they are. Other creatures—bigger, smaller, slower, faster, older, younger, more powerful—call the shots, make the air, and eat sunlight. Without them, nothing.
[After her presentation, the judge issues an injunction on all new timber sales of public land…]
“You’ve just made lumber a whole lot more expensive.”
She blinks at the accusation, unable to see how that might be a bad thing.
“Every timber firm with private land or existing rights is going to cut as fast as they can.”
p284-5
so many objections and replies (objections by the loggers; replies by the protestors)
“You’re killing our livelihood.”
“Your bosses are doing that.”
“One-third of forest jobs lost to machines in the last fifteen years.”
…
“For Christ’s sake. It’s a crop. It grows back!”
“It’s a onetime jackpot … A thousand years before the systems are back in place.”
…
“These trees are going to die and fall over. They should be harvested while they’re ripe, not wasted.”
[ripe for short-term profit for rich few, not ripe for ecosystem we depend on]
…
“You can’t stop growth! People need wood.”
“We need to get smarter about what we need.”
[and this obsession with growth, unlimited growth is a tumor, cancer]
[‘growth’, like ‘progress’ and ‘development’ – they all sound good until you ask what the words really mean]
…
p288
“We’re not saying don’t cut anything … We’re saying, cut like it’s a gift, not like you’ve earned it.”
p289
“What use is wilderness?” the judge asks.
[What?? Have you no knowledge of any science? Is not even biology mandatory in the schools anymore?]
p304
“A seed can lie dormant for thousands of years.”
p306
“Do you believe human beings are using resources faster than the world can replace them?”
…
“Yes.”
“and would you say that the rate is falling or rising?”
He has seen the graphs. Everyone has.
“It’s so simple,” she says. “So obvious. Exponential growth inside a finite system leads to collapse. Is the house on fire?”
[Literally, now, I add since Powers’ publication date.]
p321
“The Northwest has more miles of logging road than public highway. More miles of logging road than streams. The country has enough to circle the Earth a dozen times. The cost of cutting them is tax-deductible.”
p333
“A sawmill … operating for months under a revoked license and paying the nuisance fine with a week’s worth of profits.”
p343
“Seventeen kinds of forest dieback, all made worse by warming. Thousands of square miles a year converted to development. Annual net loss of one hundred billion trees.”
p388
“There’s no endgame, just … endless, pointless prosperity.”
…
“How do you win? I mean, how would you even lose? The only thing that really counts is hoarding a little bit more.”
[Yes, these people … they’re just competing, trying to win, trying to make the most … playing with us as pawns … They have more than they need, more than they really want, so … why? It’s a pathology.]
p410
“Look around! Anyone paying attention knows the party’s over.”
…
“We accomplished nothing. Not one thing.”
p431
“In this state alone, a third of the forested acres have died in the last six years. Forests are falling to many things—drought, fire, sudden oak death, gypsy moths, pine and engraver beetles, rust, and plain old felling for farms and subdivisions. … Whole ecosystems are unraveling. Biologists are scared senseless.”
[And so should we be. Scared senseless.]
p452
*******************
[And I would add to the ‘Get your head out of the clouds’ accusation: No. We’re the the realists. Our opinions are anchored in soil, vegetation, rainfall. You’re the ones with your heads in the clouds, thinking you can live in a bubble without food and water on just, what, money?]
[Though I am, was, an idealist about people. Thinking they could be rational. Thinking they could change. But they’re too narrow in their thinking—too short-term and too selfish. And too unimaginative, too willfully ignorant, too lazy. And so the pathological few keep killing the rest of us. Those with the power to do so didn’t stop them. Because even they are too narrow in their thinking or too unimaginative or too willfully ignorant. Or also pathological.]
[And so we humans will die off, along with all of the other species we have killed.]
[Maybe in a thousand years, or ten thousand years, the Earth may recover. And maybe, just maybe, homo moralis will evolve.]
