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