The propaganda mills of the Nazi and Soviet empires relied largely upon repetition to establish lies in the public mind. That technique is alive and well in America today, but the Clintons have added a new wrinkle. Their operating principle seems to be that, "if you perpetrate a new and ever more ridiculous atrocity each and every day, then the public will forget the outrages of last week.' Remarkably, the technique seems to work. After trampling upon the fundamental beliefs and self interests of 98% of Americans in merely six months in office, this regime still has a public approval rating of 39%. One day last week the Northwest came up on the atrocity of the day agenda when it was announced that the new government forest plan would decrease logging in the Pacific Northwest by 75%. Loggers and mill workers are not to worry, however, since the administration also proposed that large amounts of tax money (the confiscated earnings of productive Americans) would be provided in welfare to the displaced workers. We are not talking here of just so-called public lands. Throughout the Northwest, restrictions are increasingly being imposed upon private timber as well. Timber restrictions are increasing the cost of new housing, increasing the tax burdens on productive Americans, and generally decreasing economic living standards throughout the country. The only winners seem to be a few very large timber companies who own vast tracts of timber and generally benefit from higher prices and the enviro-agitators who gain political influence. But what about the trees? Otherwise sensible people throughout the country have been convinced that government action must be taken to save the forests and related wildlife within them. A recent visitor here from a Northeastern state remarked, upon seeing a logging truck laden with average sized logs, "They ought to be jailed for that." There are even disputes raging as to whether or not logs from trees killed by forest fires can be cut for lumber. Although birds, fish, and other surrogates are being used, under the Endangered Species Act, to stop the logging, it is generally believed that the primary goal is to save the trees. The "old growth" issue is just more surrogatese, since younger forests are continually becoming older and entering the old growth definition. Most of the logging is in younger forests anyway. Below are two graphs that show the crisis in America's forests. (Zachary Robinson made these using measurements given in Forest Statistics of the Northwest, U.S. Forest Service (1987) edition. Actually the forests of the United States, including those of the Northwest, are growing so fast that the logging industry cannot possibly keep up with them. Our only hope for stabilizing this runaway tree growth (SAVE THE OPEN SPACES—GRASS IS AN ENDANGERED SPECIES) is to turn all of the forests into National Parks like Yellowstone, so that the ecobureaucrats can burn them down. America now has 60 tons (120,000 pounds) of growing trees for each man, woman, and child in the entire national population. Moreover, that quantity is increasing at a rate of 600 pounds of trees per person per year. We live in one of the most heavily logged regions of the Northwest. From the room where I am writing, I watch the clearcuts come and go. (Yes, go, since fir trees grow faster without shade.) Even here, however, forest growth is outrunning logging. Each year more lumber is grown within my sight than is harvested. The higher prices we all will be paying for wood and paper products are just another tax imposed by 
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Vol. 21, No. 1
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 21, No. 1 Date: September 01, 1993 04:42 PM Title: Petr Beckman
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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