Your Role and Mine

                                                Your and My Roles 

                                                          In Our

                                                  (Forests’) Future

A lot about the future of America’s forests will be determined by political stuff, by economic and financial dictations and by things natural science research learns.   But there are at least four things we common people can do and, if enough of us do them, they will be more important than what the politicians, the economists and scientists do.  

Those four things are:

• Plant a tree wherever you can. — It’ll make you feel big.

• Put up a solar panel to produce some of your electricity. — It’ll make you feel “green.”

• Eat more vegies and less meat and use vegetables that are grown as close to home as possible. — It’ll make you feel healthy.

• Take children to the woods, even if it’s just Peter Pan Park, USA; talk to them about respect for nature and show them natural beauty. — People will think you’re smart.

We can’t all do all of these, but everyone can do one or two and it will make a difference, a good one.

Concerning the children, poet Mary Oliver says it well, “Teach the children.  We don’t matter so much, but the children do.  Show them daisies and the pale hepatica.  Teach them the taste of sassafras and wintergreen.  The lives of the blue sailors, mallow, sunbursts, the moccasin-flowers.  And the frisky ones — inkberry, lambs-quarters, blueberries.  And the aromatic ones — rosemary, oregano.  Give them peppermint to put in their pockets as they go to school.  Give them the fields and woods and the possibility of the world salvaged from the lords of profit.  Stand them in the green space they live in, its sticks and leaves and then the silent beautiful blossoms.”  (Mary Oliver, Blue Iris, page 55)

William Wordsworth, “What we have loved, others will love, and we will teach them how.”      

It’s time.

This is the end of my blog, thanks for paying attention.      Jerry

A survivor on Pole Mountain

"Go Sit Under A Tree And Listen And Think." Walt Whitman

                                             A Talk With The Woods

                                                  Jerry Covault

                                          Thinking, 1960 to 2016

“And never for each other shall we feel

As we may feel, till we have sympathy

With nature in her forms inanimate,

With objects such as have no power to hold

Articulate language.  In all forms of things

There is a mind”

William Wordsworth,  Fragments: Yet once again,  from the Alfoxden Notebook (I).

The forests’ brilliant colors, spring wildflowers of many kind, is how urgency looks.   There’s growing to do!  And only a short time to do it.  Every plant, from the tallest tree to the smallest forb has to gather “food” and energy to itself and convert that into leaves, stem, roots and flowers.   Each  flower competes with every other flower in the neighborhood to attract a bee, a wasp, or other bug or breeze to do the pollination so a seed can grow.   The motivation for all this activity is nothing less than the life for the individual and perpetuation of the species.  That is purposeful action. 

But, I’m here in the fall, the season of intensity is over for what we people call “this year”.  The growing during the intense season is done, the flowers have done their job, or not.   The grass has turned brown, the leaves of the mountain maple and the nine-bark are red, the pine needles are getting a deeper green and the larch needles are beginning to turn yellow, soon they will fall away.  On this day the woods are very quiet, here-and-there is the skeleton of a gentian, spring beauty, balsamroot, or any other plant that was green a few weeks earlier.   The seeds they produced are tucked into the small spaces between fallen pine needles, grass stems, shallow roots and bodies of insects that made their living eating such stuff.   It’s a quiet time.  And the woods will tell you that, -- if you listen.

“Listen”?  “Listen to what”?   “Trees and forbs can’t talk”.    

True.   But, there is tremendous pleasure in listening, feeling, seeking what the poets know about nature.   For millennia those special people have talked about a “consciousness” that exists throughout nature. 

“Consciousness”?  “What’s that about”?

Start with us,  we are conscious beings, that is, we are aware of ourselves and what’s going on around us, and, we have a subconscious somewhere deep within us.   If we listen, that subconscious can guide us, more or less, to our own good.  It lets us know what we should do and it may provide premonitions.  Also, we people have a big, powerful, “what’s happen’en and what to do now” brain that can, and often does, override our subconscious mind.   All this is pretty much common sense that is now being backed up by the scientists studying the human brain, mind and behavior.  

Let’s take that “consciousness” thing into the forest.  Every individual there performs certain actions at certain times to perpetuate its individual life and its species.  That would seem to qualify as a consciousness, even if there is no big powerful brain to override it (as far as we know).  The poets feel that consciousness in nature, and so do a lot of non-poets.  American Indian stories are about people being “plugged into the natural world” and so are the stories  of other cultures.

With the fall of a waring and cruel Assyrian king, the prophet Isaiah wrote (700 BCE)  about the earth’s reaction saying,  (Isaiah 14: 7 and 8)   

“The whole earth is at rest, and is quiet: they break forth into singing.  Yea the fir trees rejoice at thee, and the cedars of Lebanon, saying, Since thou art laid down, no feller is come up against us”.

War takes a huge toll on forests, Isaiah is making it clear that forests have a consciousness and awareness of abuse. 

Try this.  Go to a natural place, leave your troubles, leave economics (not the national debt stuff, the “I want --” stuff - whether it’s catching a fish today, or getting rich), leave science, leave political stuff, leave religion in the rig.  Get out and walk on the land -- mountain, plain, forest, grassland, wherever, with your mind like a clean erased blackboard.  Be in the now.  Really see beauty and feel what there is to feel, let nature write on your blackboard.  Sense what’s going on in this place, how it’s doing.  What is right and good for this place will start to seep into your mind. You’re becoming aware of the consciousness of that place.  The  sense of urgency in spring, the sense of quietness in fall, a sense of deep concern when there are threats (fire, disease, human impact), or, if the ecosystem is ill. This is the place’s consciousness. 

OK, that sounds like knowing the science of nature, and it is, but science is about collecting and analyzing data to draw conclusions.  This is different, if you walk quietly and let awareness rather than facts seep in, that awareness is about the place’s consciousness, that place’s capabilities, purpose, health and susceptibility.  

So what?  Will all that make anyone any money?  Will it help write a paper that will be accepted in a peer reviewed scientific journal?

Probably not.  But, it’s a tool that we have never tried to used.  We  make decisions concerning using natural resources based on economics, laws (influenced by economics), political power (influenced by economics), and (hopefully) science.  By now we should be figuring out that there is another player in this equation, NATURE.  We need to be consulting nature.  What we’ve been doing is like the health insurance company and the doctor deciding to operate without ever consulting the patient.  Seeking nature’s consciousness is outside science, outside economics, outside politics, outside man-made laws, and we don’t know how to determine what it is or how to take it seriously in our decision making.  We need to learn.   We’re facing some big questions that could use some insight - and input - from Nature. 

Should we genetically alter animals to grow more food?  Have we done right by genetically altering plants to produce more insecticides within their bodies, or resist certain herbicides?   Should we be deep drilling for oil in the oceans?  Are we right to bring back wolves? If so, where?   What do the elk think about that (what’s their consciousness)?   What do the aspen forests think about wolves?   How many people can our Earth support?  At what life style?  Global Warming - human caused or not - is telling us something.  How can we listen beyond science and economics?  How can we use what we and nature “feel” in decision making?   How can we use what the poets have been telling us?  You can fill in other big questions, and small ones.

Understanding Nature’s consciousness can be the next big tool to help people live better with one another and with our home, Earth.  That kind of knowing is beyond science and it is not the pure faith that religion requires.  It is an area of knowledge we haven’t developed the tools to investigate, we need to get to work on it, because this Earth is talking to us.

-----------------------------

“The Tables Turned”  -  A Wordsworth poem

---

Come forth into the light of things,

Let Nature be your Teacher.

She has a world of ready wealth, 

Our minds ands hearts to bless -- 

Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health, 

Truth breathed by cheerfulness.

One impulse from a vernal wood 

May teach you more of man,

Of moral evil and of good, 

Than all the sages can.

---

------------------------

There is a real good chance all this will illicit the response, “This is just nuts.”  “This would cost us money.”    OK, -- Assume that NATURE has no consciousness, no purpose, and we will just forget the whole thing and keep doing things the way we’ve always done them.  But, WHOA, do we really think that’s working all that well?  Will the way we’re doing things sustain the Earth and us people for the next 400 generations, 10,000 years, and help us to live in harmony with each other and nature?  Our present performance isn’t that reassuring.

It’s clear, if we will listen, Nature is not without its own purpose - not without “being” (as in “to have or to be”) - and, she has a lot to say.

We can benefit by learning how to listen.

  

------------------------

One must talk about everything according to its nature,

how it comes to be and how it grows.

Men have talked about the world without paying attention

to the world or to their own minds,

as if they were asleep or absent-minded.

   From a poem, “The Logos is eternal”   by Herakleitos (5th century B.C.)

————————————-

“Go sit under a tree and listen and think.

Walt Whitman,   Earth My Likeness,    “The Lesson of a Tree”   (page 67)

Threats to Forests - Politics (capital "P")

Politics

(Capital “P”)

In the past, congress has passed some far-sighted, far-reaching, science based laws to guide the protection and use of our natural resources:  The Organic Act of 1897; The Multiple Use, Sustained Yield Act; The Wilderness Act; National Environmental Policy Act; Resources Planning Act; Clean Air, Clean Water Acts; Threatened and Endangered Species Act; National Forest Management Act and there are others all with lofty goals and forward looking direction. 

However, the good laws are less than half the story.  Congress people are continually sponsoring and passing short sighted forest-affecting laws to benefit some special interest group with no consideration, or understanding, of long-term effects, or the history of the situation.  Too many laws are no more than a response to gain a few political points and dollars for the next campaign.  Many of these laws contradict laws already in effect.  Yet, the natural resource agencies responsible for managing the resources are responsible for following all the laws, even the foolish and corrupting ones.  Congress has created such a tangled web of contradictions and minutia details, many contrary to good science and common sense, there is no way for agencies to avoid lawsuits against almost any action they may take.  The dollar costs and negative effects of irresponsible lawmaking are enormous.

Senators and Representatives could pay attention to what sciences say about the long-term needs of our natural resources, they could be more concerned about the quality-of-life for future generations of people and forests, but short-term money gains and political advantage, all to often, drive poor legislation.  One of the worst examples of this is the foolish and destructive effort, from time to time, to transfer some or all of our national public lands to state or local governments, who will not be able to afford the expenses and ultimately sell the land to the private ownership for quick profits embedded in the water rights or some other resource the land holds.  This tired old tactic would be horribly destructive to the American people and the American land.  That kind of short-sightedness needs to change, our elected representatives need to practice - no, perfect (the verb, bring to perfection) - statesmanship.  We voters need to elect representatives that are worthy of America.  

As Wallace Stegner wrote, “then it (America) has a a chance to create a society to match its scenery.” (Wallace Stegner, The Sound of Mountain Water, pge 38)

Threats to Forests - politics (small "p")

politics  

small “p”

Getting to Compromise

about Forests

Thoughtful logging, careful grazing, rehabilitating damaged soils and streams, recreation infrastructure, prescribed fire, thinning dense stands of small trees, intelligent actions against forest fire and insect and disease attacks are examples of good and important work that make our forests more healthy, but it takes good science, public agreement, committed effort and money to do these things.  It takes compromise between those who believe the best we can do for forests is, “NOTHING because everything we’ve done in the forests has been a disaster,” those who just want to take the economic value from the forests and those who see scientific management as the way to healthy forests.  

Logging and roads are essential to many forest management activities and they are two key issues where disagreement is intense.  There are groups who want logging and roads and those who sincerely DO NOT want logging and roads in the forest.  Both say they want what is best for forests, but they can’t agree on what “best“ is, or how to get to “best.”  

Logging is not a threat to a healthy forest, on the contrary, it is a useful tool to develop healthy forests, that is, if it is done according to good silvicultural practices and thoughtful management.  When good silviculture is ignored, logging is often bad for the trees, the soil, the watershed, the aesthetics, the wildlife and all the other forest residents.  There are two main reason GOOD silvicultural practices may not be followed,  (1) the only objective is for short-term profits, (2) stupidity.  We know how to do good silviculture, good logging, good forest management, we just need to do it - every time, every where it is done.

Roads are a big issue in the “what’s best” debate.   Roads are a big impact on a forest, even when done well, they are also necessary for every thing we do in the forest, except Wilderness.  Roads need to be well planned to access the forest efficiently and effectively.  Roads need to be carefully surveyed and engineered to minimize impacts on soils, streams and watersheds and they need to be constructed according to an engineered plan.  Finally, and very important, roads need to be maintained to prevent erosion and stream sedimentation by rain storms and melting snow.  These are the reasons good forest roads are expensive.  Unfortunately, roads can be built cheap just by sending machinery to make a way through the forest that a machine can use.  Roads that are unplanned and not engineered usually cause serious erosion and stream pollution and miles of unnecessary impact because the objectives of the road system were not well thought-out.  When a forest road is established, whether it is a good one or a poor one, the question becomes, should the road be left open for public use or should the road be closed and used only for forest management purposes.  Either answer is wrong by a large percent of the forest-using public.  What’s a manager to do?  Agonize over every question, then make a decision, that’s what.

Yip, roads are a big problem for everyone; for those who want the forest left alone to take care of itself; for those who don’t want to spend a pile of money on an expense like forest roads and for forest scientists who see expensive roads and management activities as necessary, especially for fire management, prevention and suppression.

Ecosystems  -  Values  -  Science

  

The arguments between preservation and commercial use have been waged in the political arena, in the judicial system and in the press, each side trying to get leverage and win battles - political and legal. 

The sad thing is, this fight between commercial use and preservation is not helping decide how we should use the forests.  The real question is, “What are the things we value about a forests?”  “Preserve everything” is not a value.  “Make the most money possible and return the least possible” is not a value.  Natural beauty is a value, clean streams is a value, healthy wildlife habitat is a value, recreation opportunity is a value, a source of wood is a value.  Values vary with the kinds of forest and wild critters that are there.  How a forest is managed has to follow: (1) the ecosystem’s possibilities, (2) the values people have for the place and, (3) the scientifically based options for sustaining the forest and the values people place within it.  Values can be protected or enhanced or preserved by scientific management plans and the money to carry them out.  It takes detailed planning, but it can be done, with compromise, cooperation and commitment and we will have healthier forests to show for the efforts.

The big loser in this decades-long conflict has largely been the forest sciences.  Science has not guided the discussion, instead, science has been used as a club, by either side, when it serves a particular purpose.  The mega fires, insect epidemics, and unhealthy forest structures, are shouting for the need to get our forests healthy.   We can do that, we will have to compromise and cooperate on values, apply good science and put out the money to do the work, but it is possible to do.

Doing nothing different will NOT result in healthy forests.  Lawsuits between ideologies don’t benefit the forests, they absorb energy, time, money and thought just to win, or lose, a narrow battle.  Good science has been a loser because science, when it is considered at all, is used to support some narrow position on one side or another of a legal argument rather than a comprehensive way to guide policy and management.  Shame on us!   This ideological fighting is allowing trust and funding for responsible forest management to collapse as we burn energy, time, money and thought on legal processes that have little to do with real forests - the real world.  It’s ok to feel strongly about an issues, but cooperation, compromise, honesty, a sense of fair play and a genuine caring about our forests and this earth are essentials when considering issues.  Honest caring has been lacking at every level of the political and legal discussion, it’s all about both sides wanting to win and the forests are losing.

Earth deserves better from people, if we don’t do better, she will go on without us, or at least a lot fewer of us. 

Threats to Forests - Science AND Economics

Natural Scientists Need to Understand Economics,

Economists Need to Understand the Natural Sciences

Those who commit their education and careers to understanding and thoughtful management of the natural environment have not given enough consideration to how to pay for sustaining the trees, soil, water, wildlife, shrubs, grass and forbs in healthy functioning communities.  They have studied the natural sciences: botany, zoology, plant physiology, wildlife biology, fish biology, forestry, hydrology, soil science, weather and on and on.  These people are science oriented, committed to studying why, what and how natural systems work together.  Most of them don’t have time to be deeply interested in economics, finance, business, or political science, yet these are vitally important to how the natural world gets managed by people.

Those who commit their education and careers to economics, finance, business or politics don’t spend much of their professional time thinking about the workings of forests and what it takes to produce the 10,000 + board feet of wood necessary to build a house.  Yet, business and financial careerists want to fly-fish a mountain stream, visit Parks, forests and lakes and have their spirits renewed.  In their calculations they want assurances that wood, food, scenery are stable and a sufficient supply will always be there. 

It’s pretty clear, the natural scientists must find ways within the economic system to pay the costs.  Those in finance and business need to acknowledge it takes reinvestment to sustain natural resources and have a continuous flow of, food, wood, water, beautiful scenery, wildlife, recreation and more into the economy.  Business people, finance people and economists must find ways to pay for sustaining natural resources or that flow of things we need from the earth (like clean water) will continue diminishing while human population and demand increases.  Not a pretty thing to think about. 

We’re all in this together and we need to be pulling together.  That word “together” has to include both people and nature.  The old idea of each person doing what is best for him or her at the moment and this will get us all more things may work for a while, but it is terminal in the long-run.  

So far, the only way we have to limit the degradation of natural resources and provide security for people is by Government action:  creating National Parks and National Forests, regulation of financial activities, food inspections, work place safety, laws setting goals for clean air and clean water - you can name several more.  We are seeing that government’s actions to provide long-term security for citizens goes far beyond having a strong military and Homeland Security, it has to include a sustainable economy from sustainable natural resources. This means limiting the damage the capitalistic economic system can do to people and the environment.  The Clean Air and Clean Water Acts of 1972 have done a lot to clean our waters and air by limiting the waste and pollution individuals and industries can dump on the public domain (our air and waters).  As important as National Parks, National Forests, wildlife refuges and regulatory laws are, they are defensive actions.   A strategic offense is needed to counter capitalism’s strategy of “short-term profits and pay no attention to sustainability.”   We don’t have much of an offense at this time.   We sure need one.

On capitalism’s plus side, besides getting more “things,” there is money to be made by thinking of new things and better ways to do things.  This system creates a population of people that is innovative, adaptable and can change quickly.  Each person is motivated to better their own situation, this seems good.  After 240 years, Capitalism has influenced every nook-and-cranny of our society, our culture and our daily life.  It is the blueprint we have used to build the standard of living we enjoy, but it’s time to recognize that while Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations book may have been ok in 1776, things have evolved and so must the foundations of economics and finance.  It’s that basic, and it needs to be done, now, and a lot of people know it, we all need to admit it.  We need to demand our politicians and experts put money into maintaining natural resources and tell the public why maintenance is necessary.  

For us common people it likely will mean we have to pay more for all those “things,” and that’s a big deal.  It may take each of us redefining what the good life is and, maybe, call-out greed for what it is, SICK-AND-WRONG.  I hope we’re willing to do it for the sake of the generations ahead.

Threats to Forests - Limits

Limits 

Some limits had to  be established on what capitalism could do to the land, the waters, the air, the earth.  One of the first acts was, the Government created Yellowstone National Park, the world’s first national park.  That was 1872.  It was done because the land was simply too beautiful, too special to allow the economic system to despoil the forest, the soil, the streams and rivers, the natural beauty by turning the trees into railroad ties, sheds, barns and houses.  

Yellowstone National Park was the first step in an awakening.  Slowly some people began to realize that soil, clean water, habitat for wild animals and maybe even the natural beauty of the forest have value.   Even though the value of wildlife habitat, soil, air and other resources couldn’t  be measured in dollars, there were getting to be examples of the costs of lost productivity from eroded soil, polluted water, destroyed plants and animals.  When there was no more virgin prairie to be plowed for new corn, and wheat fields, when there were no more virgin forests to cut big trees from, some people could see there was a dollar cost to not sustaining the productivity of the continent’s natural resources.  However, that was, and still is, a big picture and big pictures are tough to take in and internalize their meaning.  All too often, nothing changes.  It comes down to the question, “If the health and productivity of the mountains, valleys and plains is damaged, how can gleaming cities thrive?”  The answer, “They can’t.”

Water in the West is an example worth considering.  West of the 100th Meridian, running north and south through mid-Nebraska and mid-Texas, the annual rainfall is less than 20 inches per year.  That is significant because 20 inches is not enough moisture to grow crops without irrigation and not enough to supply the water cities need.  The high mountains are the valleys savior because those peaks accumulate a lot of snow, much more than the valleys where the cities and farms are.  The great cities of the West exist because they have extensive systems of reservoirs to store water from melting mountain snow and canals that transport reservoir water to cities and field crops. Here’s the kicker, in the American west all the places that are suitable for large water reservoirs are now occupied with large water reservoirs.  There are no other places to build big reservoirs for existing or future cities.  We may get by with that, IF the forests and grasslands upstream from the reservoirs are kept healthy.  Here’s why.  When forests and grasslands are over-cut, over-grazed, and/or severely burned, the soils are exposed to erosion.  Rushing water carries the eroded soil particles down stream to rivers and eventually into the still water of some city’s reservoir where the soil particles settle out and become the muddy bottom.  The mud builds up, there is less and less room for water.  Dredging is horrendously expensive.  Water shortage!!  Water would be rationed in cities.  Golf courses and car washes would be the first to close, it would get worse from there on.  

This is only one example why shinning cities cannot be sustained if the forests, grasslands, croplands, soils, clean water, wild animals and natural beauty are ignored, or worse, intentionally abused for dollar profits.   The cost of mistreating the land will be paid, sometime, probably installment by installment, until, gradually, we’ve lost much of what makes our life enjoyable and even possible.   That has happened many times, many places in the past, it is just this time, there are no new places to go.

On the plus side, we know how to take care of watersheds to protect soil and water quality and quantity, it is a matter of awareness and commitment to good management based on good science and taking the long view and paying for all the costs as we go.  For example, we know there is such a thing as “natural water storage” that can increase the amount of water stored for cities and crop land without building more dams.  Natural water storage is simply the water that fills in between mineral particles and decaying organic matter that make up healthy soils.  There is a lot of spaces between the solids that can fill with water form melting snow and rains during wet seasons and provide significant amounts of water storage for cities and irrigating crops.   It involves converting small grassland valleys above reservoirs back to valleys of willows and beaver dams as they were before settlement, farming and ranching.  These wetland systems stored tremendous amounts of water in the soil and thousands of beaver dams releasing the water slowly throughout the summer.  Wetland ecosystems could be recreated, but the water users would have to buy the privately owned ranches and change the livestock from cows to beavers and the vegetation from grass to willows.  It could be done, the science is there, and it would probably be a relatively cheap way to get more water, and it would be clean water.  We could do that.  It would take commitment, money, cooperation and long-range planning.

Threats to Forests - Capitalism, Continued

As American settlement, under the motivation of capitalism, marched across the continent every natural resource was impacted, forests cut, prairies plowed, soils eroded, rivers and streams silted and polluted, minerals dug and their poisons exposed, wildlife shot and their habitat destroyed, wetlands drained, areas of ocean waters became dead zones, a small continent of plastic garbage floats in the Pacific, our air is a dump for poisons and hydrocarbons, the natural beauty that early travelers extolled has been replaced with common utilitarian structures and the atmosphere is being warmed.  On the ugly side, that’s pretty much what Capitalism has done in just 240 years, ten generations.  When you think about it, the incentives of capitalism ride rough shod over all the beautiful things this earth has prepared.  We restructured  the natural resources into the people-built environment, architecture, farms, roads, utility corridors, towns, and cities - some beautiful, some good, some,  not-so-much.   Whether good or bad, or in between, the economic system has produced “things,” things that contribute to our security, health, comfort and entertainment.  We, as consumers of all these “things” are always looking for the lowest price - that’s important.

In the forest, wood was the primary product that could be converted to money quickly, that is, wood that was already stored as big trees.  The more wood in a tree the more dollars the tree was worth.  Responding to that, we developed techniques to measure a forest in terms of board feet per acre, board feet easily converts to dollars.  So we had a way of measuring forest’s value in dollars.  Or, so we thought, as it turns out, it’s a deception - value and dollars don’t equate when talking forests.

When the trees are cut, then what?  Some people did think of planting trees to replace those that were cut, but that calculation runs smack-dab into interest rates real fast.  “If I plant trees here to replace the ones I cut it will cost $50,000 and I can harvest the wood from these baby trees in about 100 years.”  A HUNDRED YEARS !!  “I’m not going to get much good out of that!”   Even if I do sink $50,000 in planting eight inch tall trees now, who’s to say what the wood will be worth in a hundred years, will my investment make 4%, 10%, 0 %, or worse?”  “I think I’ll take that $50,000 and buy a new pickup and just sell the logged-over land, or let it go “back-for-taxes.”  This kind of perfectly logical thinking kept pushing westward entering uncut forests along the way.  The problem is, that kind of short-term thinking doesn’t lead to a good future, but, “We can’t spend time worrying about a hundred years from now, just keep getting boards to the market.”  Capitalism is excellent at that.  It takes government intervention to look a hundred years ahead, that’s what our public lands are for.  Logged areas on public lands are replanted, the forest is regenerated, it is required by laws.

It takes a lot of money to make logging equipment, build forest roads and sawmills.  Capitalism makes that money available through investors, thousands of investors, doing what they believe is best for themselves because their investment will grow.  It will grow because the company will use all that money to make the best product it can at the cheapest cost it can and we all get more “things” - right now.  

That thinking made sense when the natural resources (forests) seemed limitless (but, of course, they never really were).  The country needed more wood, no problem, after we’d logged the eastern states we logged the forests of the Lake States until they were gone too.  Only the biggest and best logs went to the sawmills, the smaller logs were left to rot and become fuel for wildfires because, “there’s not enough money in small logs to haul them out of the woods.”  We’ve already calculated that planting trees in the cutover areas wouldn’t pay-off in a lifetime, so, capitalism demanded that we just move on to new forests that were “God given” (after we’d cleared out the First People who had managed the forests).  After all, the forests of the American West hadn’t been touched. 

In most American forest the drive for the cheapest possible boards does not leave behind a way to sustain the nation’s need for wood, and the trees are only a part of a forest community.  Wild animals, the water and soil suffer and that suffering is eventually passed on to people.  Soil and water are basic elements to all of life.  Whether we are prosperous or destitute, have gleaming cities or live in wandering clans is dependent on productive soil and clean water.  

In all too many cases it works like this, in the wake of destructive logging and/or grazing, raw soil is exposed to impact of falling rain, greater accumulation of snow and direct summer sun that can heat soil to over 100 degrees.  These situations erode top soil at an alarming rate.   Streams that had flowed clear became muddy from carrying a load of soil and that erosion multiplies as the water flows downstream.   Clean water’s action on stream banks and bottom is like rubbing a piece of wood with a white sheet of typing paper.  Nothing much happens.  If you add sand to that sheet of paper, sandpaper, you can sand away the wood.  When water is carrying silt it wears away the stream banks like it is sandpaper, adding more silt to the stream.  Fish and bugs that need clean water die in muddy water, there isn’t enough oxygen.  Somewhere downstream, where the valley flattens and the speed of the water slows, the heavy silt settles out and becomes a mud flat.  Soil that once supported a forest is now somewhere else and infertile subsoil and rock are left where the trees once were.  Only weeds and brush will grow there long before trees return naturally.  

It is not just bad forestry practices that altered the land’s foundations, agriculture has done the same.  Early American farmers wore out the productive soils in New England and the tobacco crop lands of the Atlantic states.  So, they picked-up and moved to the mid-west  where they could produce bushels of food cheaper than by taking care of the land they were leaving.  As farming moved west, native prairie grasses were plowed under so corn and wheat could be planted.  Farming practices that produced the least-cost food exposed thousands of acres of bare soil to sun, wind and rain.  Dry years came, the wind blew, the wind blew Kansas and Oklahoma soil to the Atlantic Ocean.  In wet years, thunderstorms sent thousands of acre-feet of Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Nebraska top soil down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico creating a dead zone far out into the Gulf where no fish could live, and still don’t.  Along with the soil, it’s the eroded pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers that are killing the waters of the Gulf.  That’s pretty darn significant, especially if you fished those waters for your living. 

American industries acting as individuals doing what made sense to produce products at the lowest cost dumped their waste into the public domain, our lakes, rivers and air.   Lake Erie caught on fire, the James River became so polluted people knew they shouldn’t TOUCH the water, the air extending around many American cities became so polluted it was unhealthy to breath.  Yet, every polluting action made sense to the individual doing it because it provided the product at the cheapest cost.  It makes sense from the individual’s point of view and it produces “things” we can afford.  But, considering sustaining our civilization and way-of-life for the long-term, it doesn’t make much sense. This sounds a lot like what Babylon went through in ancient times, when it was one of the most beautiful cities and greatest centers of civilization on earth.  The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were there, one of the Seven Wonders of the World.  Those folks didn’t take care of their forests, their cropland, their soils, their waters and today, what was one of the wonders of the world, is a desert.  There is a lesson there.

Each individual doing what made sense to them to make products at the cheapest price has resulted in horrendous damage to the resources we all ultimately depend upon.

Forest Service's Clearwater Guard Station,
burned in a forest fire last weekend.
I rode out of here many times, - good memories.

Threats to Forests - Capitalism

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

of Capitalism

The basic premiss of Adam Smith’s capitalism ideals as told in his book, The Wealth of Nations, is that the pursuit of each individual’s self-interests will lead, as if by an “invisible hand,” to a greater good for all people.  He opposed anything that interferes with pure competition, whether it is government, business, labor, companies, banks, Wall Street, or whatever.  Considering how business, labor and anyone who is anybody lobbies congress to limit competition in their favor, Adam must be rolling over in his grave these days.  Many “talking heads” and politicians today call on Adam’s name when they want to extoll the virtues of “free market capitalism,”  “supply-side economics,” “trickle down” and “limited government,” usually in an effort to get some special privileges for themselves.  Poor Adam, *sigh*. 

At its root Adam’s capitalism theory is, the individual person will do what is best for himself or herself and by doing that the entire society will be better off.  We’ll all have more “things” from food to cellphones, from roads to aircraft carriers.  But, there is nothing in Capitalism that assures it can work over the long-run in a world of finite resources, in fact, there are a couple reason why it may not and probably can’t.  Some people who think about economic stuff a lot say the whole capitalistic system must have growth because only anticipated growth attracts the investment capital that fuels every business, big and small.  If there is no promise of growth there is no capital investment; then the government would have to step in and save the businesses, or everyone would be unemployed and that would probably lead to a revolution.  That’s pretty serious stuff, so every month some newsperson tells us how much the economy grew and what the experts say about that much growth, it is never enough. Yet, nothing can grow indefinitely, well maybe the universe, so they tell us, but that is expanding into “nothing,” whatever that is.  Anything short of the universe that keeps expanding will eventually outgrow its home, in our case, Earth.   Also, it’s probably not too far wrong to say pure capitalism is mean, it takes without giving back any more than it has to; to people, to natural resources, or to infrastructure.  it’s pure competition (IGM & WM = I Got Mine & Want More)  and there’s not a lot of “giving” in that.  And, of course, there is the fatal problem of ignoring long-term effects of short-term profit-taking, that’s been called, “penny wise and pound foolish.”  

The good news is, capitalism, as an economic system, is not from nature, it is not a hurricane, not a tornado, not El Nino, not the change of seasons; people made it, so people can change it.  Considering history and the direction we’re going (toward a huge cliff), it’s time to make some big changes.

There is more on this to be discussed, or "to be continued."

Fraternal Twins - A Story

Fraternal Twins, A Story

- to think about -

(This is s little long, but you may enjoy it)

Once upon a time, in the year 1776, twins were born, a girl and a boy.  Although they were born in a very humble home, they had a big back yard to play in.  Through the next 230 plus years they would have some tough times, but the things they accomplished are a shining example to all who came to know them.  You see, their home was the United States of America.  

The girl’s name is American Democracy, “Dema” for short.  She was born in the American Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.  The boy is American Capitalism, “Cap“.  Cap had his start as Adam Smith’s book The Wealth of Nations published in 1776.  It’s the classic description of Capitalism and makes the case that free markets are more productive and beneficial to people than other economic systems.   From the beginning Dema and Cap were very different, but they occupied the same home and they still do.  Down through the years, they have found ways to generally get along, although sister and brother fights have been common.

Dema is all about freedom and security, education, a comfortable and safe life for her people.  Dema has been committed to everyday people having an important say in their individual and collective way.  She knew that down through the years her people would hire some managers that may lust for power, so she divided governing into three parts, Judicial, Legislative and Executive. Her thinking is that no one part should gain too much power causing the people to become mere pawns.

Cap, on the other hand, is not so high minded, he doesn’t want any limits on his powers.  Cap is rambunctious, up for a challenge. “Go for it!“ “Just stay outt’a my way and I’ll get things done.”

Cap and Dema have both improved the day-to-day lives of Americans down through the years. For example, in today’s automobiles Cap has brought us a GPS on the dash and DVDs for the kids in the back seat.  Dema has brought us seat belts and air bags.  It is good to have both.  

Dema looks far ahead in time,  does long range planning and takes actions that may require decades or longer to pay off.  Our National Parks, Public Universities, the Panama Canal, Social Security, Interstate Highways, Center for Disease Control, and the Space Program are some examples of Dema looking far ahead and doing things that are for people’s good and eventually good economically.  Cap generally doesn’t plan more than ten or twenty years ahead.  That’s  because Cap needs to make money and the cost of borrowing money for long term projects prevents doing things that take a very long time to pay off.  Often Cap’s decisions are based on what will produce the greatest profits in the next quarter of the year.  This time-thing is a big difference between these twins.

They are an unlikely pair to grow up in the same house, but there they are.  

In those first years their big back yard (North America all the way to the Pacific) helped them each do their thing without getting in each others way too much.  Dema hung around the Eastern seaboard and slowly developed things she thought were important: schools, good roads, police, fire departments and rules-of-fair-play everyone should follow.  Cap was able to kick up dust, stomp on things that were in his way and pretty much do what he wanted on the frontier.  Money could be made on the frontier because there were lots of natural resources (good soil, forests, water,  minerals) to make things (farms, boards, metal) and not many restrictions on how to do it.  It went on that way for a while, Dema and Cap growing up, each pretty much doing their own thing.  Dema helped Cap from time to time, President Andrew Jackson moved the Cherokee people out of their home in Georgia to the Oklahoma frontier, that made the Cherokee’s land available for Cap. Dema fought a war with Mexico and gained Texas, that gave Cap a boost.  Dema and Cap were both growing, but not in each others way.

About the time American Democracy and American Capitalism were acting like they were in their early teens, in the 1860s, they had a terrible experience.  Civil War.  The War lasted about four years, there were terrible costs, but the American States stayed together and slavery was over - done - finished!  

After the War Dema was in a state of shock, needing rest and time to think.  Not Cap!  Farms, towns, cities needed to be rebuilt.  Railroads were headed out across the continent.  Many people who’s personal and economic lives had been shattered by war headed West for a new beginning.  American Capitalism boomed!  Once again there were few rules, a lot of natural resources to be conquered - as well as Native People.  There was  a whole lot of money to be made conquering the frontier.  It was great for Cap, Dema helped where she could, giving land to railroad builders, putting Native People on reservations and making treaties with them - which Cap ignored.

The American frontier was declared closed in the 1890 census.  That was a jolt, Cap didn’t have more land to exploit.  Cap turned on people, child labor, unsafe factories, unsafe mines, unsafe lumbering, long, hard working hours.  The money could still flow, “Things were getting done.” But, the money was flowing to fewer and fewer people at the tiptop of the money machine.  The common people were hurting.   Women still did not have the vote. 

Dema took notice.  Her manager at that time, Theodore Roosevelt, saw the people needed help, limits were put on Cap.  Slowly things started to get better for people.  Cap was learning to adjust to the limits and things were going good.  

As the twins grew into young adulthood their characters became more developed.   Dema seemed to be of two minds.  On the one hand (Republican philosophy), she wanted to support her brother and felt she would do anything for him.  When he got into trouble she would be there doing everything she could to help him.  On the other hand (Democratic  philosophy), she cares for the people and the things that are beneficial and fair to them.   

Cap had always seemed to have bipolar tendencies, manic for a period of time then depression.  As he got bigger and stronger his bipolar swings were greater.  During up times, the factories were running full steam, farms were productive, cities were growing, industrial giants were making big money and it looked like the good times would go on and on.  Life was good.  Then there would be a down turn, a recession or depression,  and everything would be terrible for Cap.  He usually blamed everyone else for his problems, especially Dema because she hadn’t let him do everything he wanted without any limits.  But, together, they muddled on.

Another war, this time a World War I.  America lost many thousands of young men, but her cities, factories and farms were in tact.  Europe’s were in shambles.  Cap learned a big lesson, wars can be good for him.   It takes lots of money to make things that go “boom!”  After the war, those factories could make other things people in the destroyed countries needed.

Dema?  Not so much.  She had to increase taxes and borrow a lot of money to pay Cap for all those war machines.  That money didn’t educate, build infrastructure or much of anything else useful to her people.  All that borrowed money had to be paid back.

Smart people had been concerned about Cap’s bipolar condition for years, when he was in depression it was hard on everyone, rich and poor.  These economists were looking for ways to ease the pain when Cap had one of his down periods.  Dema listened to these wise people and put some limits on Cap here and there.  

But Cap was riding high after the big War -- until October 29, 1929, the bottom fell out. Cap went into deep Depression.   Dema did everything she could to help Cap and her people.  It was a grim time, most people were hurting - a lot!  Dema took some bold steps as a result of Cap’s big bout with Depression.  Cap would have to take some medicine, it tasted terrible, he didn’t think he needed it, but Dema insisted that banking had to be improved and the financial markets needed more rules and regulations and there had to be social security for people.  Cap should never fall into another bout of Depression like the 1929 crash.  

It was World War II that finally put the end to Cap’s big depression, a terrible remedy.  Again, Cap prospered by war.  After the War, Dema became involved  in developing ways to help the American people, The GI Bill that helped with home ownership and education for veterans were very big things.  

Soon, Dema and Cap united in a head-to-head battle against another economic system, Communism.  Their very existence was at stake and every American knew it.

Dema and Cap were always two separate individuals, sister and brother. They cooperated when necessary, they fought with each other over control issues, sometimes seriously, but somehow they had always worked things out.  Communism wasn’t like that, the economic system and the government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) were fused into one seamless entity.  The cold war with Communism was for control of the entire world, including survival of Democratic American Government and American Capitalism.  

During the Viet Nam War, a part of the Cold War, one of Dema’s managers believed America was rich enough to have both, “guns and butter”.   America wasn’t.  Her National Debt rose.   Dema struggled with how much to tax citizens, while, at the same time, dealing with civil rights for all Americans, The Feminist Movement, the Space Program, and how to improve the security, health, education and general welfare of Americans.  Each a huge effort.   Communism only dealt with the things that would promote the USSR’s Cold War goals.

Communism folded in 1989, defeated after 44 years of Cold War without a bomb exploding.  The workers in Communism couldn’t keep pace with what Dema and Cap could provide their people, even with all the diversions and conflicting issues Dema and Cap struggled to solve.  Fascism and Communism were enemies Americans could see, feel, hate, and we could fight them in factories, farms, schools and battlefields, we could eventually defeat them.

After that, Cap went on a manic spree.  Lots of Americans became millionaires and billionaires, regular people were making money in the stock market and many people were buying second homes.  Times were good.  Government had budget surpluses in the 1990’s.

Then - 9/11/2001!  Retaliation!  America would go to war against al-Qaeda  the country in the middle was Afghanistan.  Dema’s managers were right about that, but then they lost their way.  America would attack Iraq and there would be a tax CUT while fighting the two wars. 

Little by little, since 1980, the philosophy had crept in that Dema was the problem and Cap had all the answers.  With that creeping philosophy, regulations and limits on Cap’s activities were eased and done away with.  And why not?  Cap was working like a charm, people were making money.  It was hardly noticed that a greater and greater percentage of the money in America was being concentrated and controlled by fewer and fewer people and institutions at the top of the economic pyramid.  Big money hired more and more lobbyists and lawyers to control all three government departments, Legislative, Executive and Judicial at national and state levels.  Cap had the money to influence laws that would make him stronger by concentrating wealth.  This meant weakening  environmental protections, public safety, infrastructure and regulations to make finance safe, fair and transparent.

September 2008, Cap crashed again, it looked bad, maybe another Depression.  Important people, people we believed were smart and responsible, people we thought were taking care of things too complicated for us to understand began screaming, “The financial sky is falling!”  “Too big to fail is failing!” “GM may close!” 

Those who we trusted were telling us we have to pony up hundreds of billions of dollars and give it to big banks, big insurance and car companies. We’ll have to borrow the money and these banks, insurances and companies may or may not ever pay us back.  We were told we have to give these “Too big to fails”  hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars - OR ELSE!  Or else what?  “THEY’LL FAIL!”  “Oh.”  So, Dema bailed out Cap, again.  And now, no country in the history of the world has ever had this much debt for us, our sons and daughters and their sons and daughters to pay off.  IF we can even do it.  Maybe Americans can.  I hope we can.

How did this happen?

We need to go back to the early 1980’s when Dema’s manager said, “Government is the problem, not the solution.” He believed it and began to take actions.  Greed was said to be good and the basis for Capitalism, it was unleashed.  Accepting greed as “good” was like putting Cap on steroids.  Many politicians vilified government workers  as people who couldn’t make it in a “real” job, that they are a drag on real working people. (“Those who can’t do, teach.  Government workers are a liability on the taxpayer,” and many many more non-sequiturs.)  Air traffic controllers were fired because they wanted a pay raise.   Regulations that had been in place to limit the powers of Cap were deregulated, weakened, or loop-holed and the government employees who did the regulating were discredited.  Taxes were viewed as a bad  thing that limited Cap, so the Legislative branch, both national and state, handed out tax loopholes to lobbyists like candy at a parade.  America was losing sight of the basic fact that government is about service and government services are necessary for citizens and the general economy.  The annual Government budget went deficit (into the red), each year piling up greater and greater debt.  Americans were told, “debt doesn’t matter”.  The military was exulted and for several years was given a 10% budget increase each year.  Ten percent of hundreds of billions is a big bunch.  The $800 toilet seats the Navy bought is an indicator the military had more money than they could use wisely.  The Gulf War happened, more debt piled up. 

This game plan set Cap on a run like he’d never had before.  He was getting more powerful every day, huge amounts of money were accumulating  in fewer and fewer companies and people.   Cap could buy more lobbyists and lawyers to get Dema’s legislators to pass laws that favored him.  It was an upward spiral with fewer and fewer limits on what Cap could do, there was no end in sight.  It was great!  In the 1990’s Government budgets were in the black and the National Debt was being paid off - a good thing.

Dema, on the other hand, was deeply hurt by the “Government is the problem” attitude.  It takes exceptionally strong people committed to public service to suffer the criticism of being “a government bureaucrat” and still go out and do a good job every day.  Enough good people could not be found to fill every important government job.  Citizens were being hurt by all this and they didn’t realize it, even though there were signs along the way.   The Enron Company went down because of its greed and evil ways.  Contaminated peanut butter was sold to our schools because a company was filthy and greedy and regulators didn’t do anything about it.  Derivatives, designed to get around important financial regulations, were invented.  Bernie Madoff stole billions from the poor and rich, regulators didn’t challenge him. Then, there was the, “We don’t want the  smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud,”  lie designed to lead us to war in Iraq.  And the, “Debt don’t matter” lie that led to a tax cut so Americans wouldn’t notice we were in two wars.  

All these and more brought us to September 2008 when the cries went up, “We are heading for the cliff!”  “Too big to fail!”  “Bailout!”  Cap was crying to be saved.  We still don’t know if they were crocodile tears or if they were real.  We’ll never know what the effect would have been on Dema and Americans if the big banks did fail. 

What we do know is, Dema, once again, bailed-out Cap.  The American people borrowed hundreds of billions of dollars to save a gang of big banks, insurance companies and couple car companies.  Four years after the bailouts the car companies are making money, the big banks have gotten bigger and are again paying their managers immoral amounts of money that they certainly do not earn or deserve - and we don’t know why.  The big insurance company is crying about government controls over what they do, but they haven’t paid back the 160+ billion  dollars we people gave them to save their hides.  And, the common Americans are still hurting: the jobless rate was high for years, home foreclosures have hurt millions of people, homeowners and small businesses are intimidated and abused by banks, even with the Affordable Care Act passed Dema’s Legislative, Executive, and Judicial are playing a shell game, keeping Cap in control, making huge money on sick Americans. 

Can American Democracy and American Capitalism work together to save this country from huge debt; from concentration of wealth and power in the few, the greedy; from our inadequate education system; from unfairness to the common people; from environmental degradation; from our aging infrastructure?  

We don’t know yet, the story has pages to turn.  Dema and Cap have never been in a situation like this before.  Dema’s political structure is seriously broken.  Congress is being  short sighted, self-serving, stuck in opposing ideologies, unwilling to compromising.  It obviously lacks the character, intelligence and courage to do what is right for the people and the Nation.  Congress is simply not working.  Not much hope there.  The Executive needs more skill, intelligence, wisdom, commitment, integrity and clear-sightedness than we’ve ever seen.  The Judicial, that was  meant to be where wisdom resides, abandon that mantel when The Supreme Court went political in the 2000 election decision and the 2010 “Citizens United” decision.  The Citizens United decision gives Cap a huge advantage over Dema, MAYBE THE ABILITY TO CRUSH HER and turn America into an oligarchy (a state governed by a few people or families) disguised as a democracy.  

Cap has turned to shortsighted self-serving greed as a mantra, with J.P. Morgan Chase Bank setting the example, and he’s getting away with it, increasing his dominance over Dema in every way. 

America’s best hope is in the people, can we act unselfishly, with courage, determination, intelligence, with confidence in the long view?  Can we again make Dema’s institutions work “for the greatest good to the greatest number in the long run”?  Or, does our Congress accurately represent Americans?  I guess we’ll see.

Pogo’s words have come to reality, “We have met the enemy and he is us”