Threats to Forests - Economics

Economics

To talk about economic systems lets start before capitalism existed.  For far more than 10,000 years people lived on North American continent and lived by a very different economic system, even though some of these First People, the Iroquois League of Nation for example, had a democratic form of government.  Democracy and Capitalism are not always hand in hand (see “Fraternal Twins” below).  Those early people had worked out a policy for managing the forests and prairies that sustained the ecosystems and provided their necessities of life, generation after generation for over 400 generations - yes, four hundred generations, plus or minus a few.  

An old Ponderosa pine growing in a tough place.

Their economic system required that they manage the natural resources to sustain wild animals and fish as a protein source and edible wild plants.  Shelter, clothing, tools and money were from the animals, plants and minerals the people lived with, hunting and gathering.  They cultured clean water in the rivers so fish populations could thrive, and manage land to produce nourishing grass and shrubs for the grazers and browsers (deer, elk, moose, buffalo and, later, horses).  They managed the forests and grasslands with fire, fires set often, so the flame lengths were only 4, 6, or 8 feet, fire crept along burning the dead grass, old shrubs and limbs and down trees that had accumulated since the last fire less than ten years before.  The people knew these cool fires revived the grasses and shrubs because the roots weren’t killed, also, the low intensity fires don’t kill the bigger trees that have thick insulating bark.  The year following the fire new grasses and shrubs were so succulent and packed with nutrients, the grazers were back in greater numbers than before, that meant abundant food for the people.  It was a sustaining economic system that served their way-of-life..

About sixteen generations ago Europeans began making settlements on the continent.  Their forest management policies were very different.  The European economy grew food on farms, traded for goods and services and their homes had foundations.  Forest and prairie fires creeping around couldn’t be tolerated, and they weren’t.  A change in forest policy and management began to take effect.  The farm/trade/manufacture economy wanted very different products from the forest than the hunter/gather economy wanted.  Clean water, not so important; healthy grazing for wild animals, not important; forest beauty, forget it.  The policy was to make money off of those big trees and at the same time clear the land for farm crops. 

400 Generations!

Really?

Let’s look at that.

We’d better digress for a bit and explore that  400 generation thing.  Our present economic system, capitalism, just started in 1776 so has only existed for less than ten  generations; European settlement didn’t get started here much before 1600, that’s only sixteen generation and we’re wearing out the resources that support our way-of-living and our lives.   We’ve already had to pass laws to try and limit water and air pollution and save a whole host of wild critters and plants from becoming extinct, plus a lot of regulations to try and limit our abuses to Earth (DDT ban and on-and-on). Those necessary laws and regulations are both incriminating and magnanimous.  Incriminating because, so quickly, we are destroying so much of the Earth’s resources that supports us.  Magnanimous because we see the absolute end in sight for critters from the bald eagle to the snail darter fish and want to do something about it, plus, in the dark places of our mind, where we don’t want to go, we know, “That could be us.”  But it isn’t just today’s economic system that is taking us pel mel for the cliff, there have been plenty of civilizations that have done the same thing before us, and they went over the cliff.

“The Romans” for example, they didn’t last more than thirty generations, and think what they had.  They started with wonderful natural resources, a mild climate for people and growing plant crops, rich productive soils, horses, cows, sheep and goats (none of which existed in the Western Hemisphere), there was a rich protein source in the sea, the shore line had natural harbors and there were forests for making ships, metals to be mined and worked into tools and weapons.  There wasn’t much gold and silver nearby so they solved that by taking over Spain and working Spaniards in the mines as slaves.  As forests were cut and soils worn out close to Rome they conquered neighboring areas and worked the land, the forests and the people to death - literally.  When one set of land and people wore out, the Romans would conquer another place with land and people to be slaves and keep Rome going.  Always wearing out the forests, soils and people and always expanding their empire and transportation highways.  They ripped through North Africa, the Arabian peninsula, Syria, Armenia, and many other areas of Asia Minor.  Why these places?  Because, before Roman conquest, these places were rich in their ability to grow crops, there were forests and other resources the Romans wanted back home.  But even that efficient and brutal system finally collapsed because the land and resources they could conquer were used up.  And look what they left behind, North Africa and much of the middle east is still desert and poor land incapable of supporting healthy forests, crops and cities. (Men and Nature, Marsh, Introduction)   When the land had been abused enough by the Romans and wouldn’t support their imperial needs any longer, the great empire fell apart, around 1100 AD, and Europe went into economic depression, or chaos, called the Dark Ages or the Middle Ages, whatever; that lasted 400 years until the Renaissance.

A couple thousand years before the Romans, Canaan, the area from Lebanon south along the Mediterranean to Egypt, was a land rich in agricultural abundance, The Bible’s Exodus 33:3 refers to it as, “a land flowing with milk and honey.”  A lot of history happened there since then, conquest by one empire after another, each abusing the land, cutting forests, overgrazing by sheep and goats, and causing soils to eroded.  Today the area is certainly not “a land flowing with milk and honey,” it’s mostly desert and sparsely populated. 

In the Americas, the Mayas and the Aztecs were on about the same track as the Romans, except they didn’t have horses to supply power so their destructive ways were taking more time.  Their time ran out when the Spanish, with horses, iron and germs came and decided to take all the gold they could get and make slaves of the people.  The slave part didn’t work out too well, but the Spaniards got the gold and left the Mayas, Aztecs and Incas civilizations in shambles.  The mound builders in the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers had a sophisticated civilization with cities of twenty to thirty thousand people that lasted for over 6000 years, but they finally “went under,” possibly by diseases introduced by the first invading  Europeans.   It was a couple hundred years before white settlement got to where this mound builders civilization had been, by then the forest had reclaimed the land, but some mounds remain today.   The ancient Pueblo People in the Southwest had sophisticated civilizations, but, the best guesses are, they used-up their resources, forests, cropland, and water.    

A Ponderosa pine, 342 years old.

So, conquest doesn’t seem to work for the long run, and the present economic system has its problems with wearing out the Earth’s resources.  Yet, the First People in North America had social, economic and political systems that endured for 400 generations.  How did they do that?  What did their systems involve?  Well, they involved marriage, they involved religion, they involved education of young people and recognizable rights-of-passage into adulthood.  They involved political systems, including the Iroquois Nation’s democratic system and a constitution, they involved wars, they involved trade and money, they involved guiding philosophies, they involved the arts, and medicine, they involved divisions of labor.  There were rich nations and poor nations depending on their natural resource base.  And they involved land management policies and techniques with long-term sustainable goals that were the basis for their economic system. But, of course, their systems didn’t evolve a lot of the amenities we enjoy (relatively safe child birth for mother and child, longer healthier lives, warm homes in winter, abundant food).  Would it be worth living without hot showers?  I guess they thought so.

Hot showers, or four hundred generations?  We must be smart enough to figure out some middle ground that can sustain the earth’s forests, soil, clean water and air and still provide food and an enjoyable lifestyle, but not a greedy one, greed is the killer. 

Our economists and finance people need to do some serious thinking about the long-term (everything) and our politicians need to acquire some gumption and cooperate with one another to help us all save this life-giving earth from us. 

Enough digression, back to economics and trees.