From the stump...
Certification... Who will pay?

The most common hot topics we hear in logging presently are sagging markets (is there an end in sight?) and certification.

With the Fed’s reduction in interest rates we have reason to believe those markets will improve as we look towards the spring season. The feeling prior to September 11th, was that the spring season would be far better than what we’d seen last year... it’s an attitude which prevails even today, though its cast with a healthy dose of cautious optimism. Time will tell soon enough. 

The issue of certification seems to be of particular interest to those who will profit most... those doing the certifying. While cast in the light of social righteousness, their interests would likely subside were the rich profit motives removed.

The interest, from the industry’s viewpoint, comes in assuring the public of the constant improvements in stewardship both on public and privately held ground. In spite of having more standing timber now than at the turn of the century, the message of constantly improving forestry and logging practices has largely been out of sight, thus out of mind of the general public.

The American public’s migration from rural to urban environs over the past 50 years in particular has removed direct experience as proof of the good job being done on the ground by the logging/forestry industry. What has been missed in practical experience, has been filled in by the imagery cast by the Eco-industry... very effectively. So effectively, that much of the publicly owned timberland has been placed off limits to logging just within the past decade. The Eco-industry has no interest in settling for anything short of removing most if not all natural resource industries from the United States. As insane as it sounds one need only to take a look at the “no-compromise” stance of the past 25+ years. While 10 years ago, the “Wilderness Project” was the wild-eyed fantasy of Eco-elite, under the Clinton Administration, much of that plan came to fruition... all at the expense of the natural resource industry and their surrounding communities.

Thus certification from the perspective of industry is access to the land... not just public lands, so much of which have been sacrificed for the sake of political expediency to the throne of the Eco-industry, but also to private lands. Certification presents a verifiable, independent third party assurance that land, flora, and fauna are being managed in a sustainable fashion, which the public can trust.

Public trust, verifiable sustainability is the ultimate goal of certification.
Certification’s sudden emergence into the marketplace comes at the insistence of the Eco-industry whose interests are two fold: political and ideological control, and profits coming from a process they’d dearly love to control, and market. The preferred method for pushing their agenda has been through the marketplace... what some might describe is public relations blackmail (though we think that might be a bit harsh). While the market is fair play, misinformation campaigns for which the Eco-industry has written the book, are successful not in proving their point, but in casting “a cloud of doubt” over their scenario of choice. Corporations are acutely aware of their public image. While most want to do the right thing in terms of being a good neighbor, their bottom lines are subject to the whims of poor publicity, deserved, proven or not.

What’s happened the past two years has not all gone the way the Eco-industry has wished however. While we’re most familiar with SFI (Sustainable Forestry Initiative), FSC (Forest Stewardship Council), and ISO 14001 certification standards, there exist some 40 certification systems worldwide. The push in Europe is for acceptance of a broad field of broadly agreed to standards so the systems can co-exist: this includes FSC, SFI, and ISO 14001. This scenario is distressing to the Eco-professionals, in that their dreams had been to overwhelm the market with (their favored) FSC standards over which they could keep total control. The good news comes at the expense of the control-happy radical segment... and hopefully a set of standards, which actually have some relationship to better management, rather than ideological purity.

Not everyone in the marketplace is enamored with certification. Aside from architects for public structures, there exists no huge public clamor for certified wood products, and similarly little demand in the general marketplace, where price still rules the roost. Which brings us full circle back to the original question... who will pay for the additional paperwork, and demands of certification which the marketplace has a decided lack of enthusiasm for? Who indeed.

Secondly... does certification deliver sustainable forestry... or does it merely make the case for sustainable forestry that’s been practiced in this country the past 50 plus years? We think the latter. However, do not lose sight of the real goal of accessibility to the land and providing solid ground for public policy makers to make their decisions from. That is what certification’s about. The question remains who will pay, and who will profit.

Alternative energy, and independence
Brown outs, and the spike in gasoline prices this past winter and spring brought out the cry for alternative energy sources yet again. Wind generators, and solar collectors remain the darlings of media, and while they have greatly improved the technology the past several decades, they still fall short of satisfying present and future demands.

A known technology, which is tried, proven, and being refined even further is biomass... which our beloved, enlightened media (ideological blinders firmly in place) seems to have totally missed. The message of biomass as a real energy solution has not missed the Europeans, however. Ever energy conscious, Scandinavian countries in particular are exploring and utilizing biomass from their forests to fire steam generating plants producing electricity while cleaning up their forestlands, producing a true win-win scenario.
Everywhere we travel we’re exposed to overstocked forests in desperate need of thinning, yet with no market for thinned materials. Biomass electrical generation plants hold the promise of providing a market for those materials, while providing predictable electrical generation capacity we so desperately need, in addition to reducing our need for imported oil and/or gas. Sound like a winner? Well, yes.... However...

As responsible and reasonable as it sounds, biomass has one giant hurdle it needs to clear... public perception, and public policy.

In the public policy arena, one ally who should see biomass as an answer to American energy independence is the Eco-industry. They can serve to advance the policy, or to block it... or simply ignore it.

We think it is time to bring biomass to the forefront. First... we have fuels in abundance, with more growing every day. Secondly, it is broadly available and expanding in terms of availability. Thirdly, it is very good for the forests, particularly when properly managed, to thin growing forests, then utilize the wood products via developing and existing technologies to remove those materials to generate electrical supply.

What is needed is a change in public policy to take advantage of the supply, the technology, and assert our energy independence by using what we already have which is currently being left to rot, or left to fuel forest fires. We see it as a win-win, and another step towards energy independence to keep our country and future generations free.

To achieve these ends requires the help of those within the environmental community to press for a change in public policy in recognizing the present and future importance of biomass for energy production. It is responsible, it is accessible, environmentally friendly, and it is grown on our own soil.

It is time we step up to all alternatives in dealing with the energy that keeps our nation independent. It’s time we look at biomass, and bring it to the table, putting it to work for all our benefit.