Nelson Wong wrote: > > To members of the Forest List, > > > In the past decade, at least 100 of the more than 140 chip mills in > > the Southeast have been constructed. Annual logging to supply these > > chip mills has been estimated to exceed 1.2 million acres annually. > > > > "Though there has been a vast proliferation of chip mills throughout > > the Central and Southern US in the past decade to supply the pulp and > > paper industry, there is little thorough documentation of the impacts > > of the wood chipping industry despite growing public concern," stated > > Douglas Sloane, Co-Director of the Southeast Forest Project. > > > > Since the beginning of this year, citizens throughout the Southeast > > have been calling for a region-wide study of the impacts of the wood > > chipping industry. > > To call for a region-wide study is a tunnel vision of the wood-chipping > industry. One must really begin with the 'why' question - Why did the > wood chipping industry exist at all? Answer: Paper & wood-pulp. BTW, > wood-pulp is also use in picture frames manufacture. So, 'no wood-chips > = no paper & pulp'. > > Second question, take away the paper & pulp, what do you get? No books, > magazines, newspapers. Meaning no 'Times, The Boston Globe, Wall Street > Jounal, Newsweek, PC World, Bibles, Reader Digest, Playboy, Nikkei, > etc....also no libraries! > > If the wood-chipping industry in the USA is not 'green' enough, why not > import the wood-chips from, say, Canada, New Zealand, Chile, Sweden, > etc... I am sure their forest management could easily rival the USA. So > what's the problem? Forest pests & diseases. Now really? > > So what are the solutions? Fibre, hemp, grass??? Are these the > solutions? Can they meet the demands, specifications, price level, of > the industry? I wonder. > > You know what you need in the USA? Environmental organisations with > their own respectable team of researchers, technologists, business > strategists, who can talk & communicate with the business world. The > business world welcomes solutions, not loud mouths! > > God bless. > > Nelson Wong > MTC Nelson, Nelson, Nelson ..... What are you, a parrot ??? People in the U.S. and AROUND THE WORLD who are opposed to the woodchip industry are not unaware of what things are made from wood pulp; nor are they without the resources of knowledgeable folks to argue the point on scientific high ground... The woodchip industry in the U.S., particularly in the Southeast, is engaged in wholesale forest destruction - by this I mean either stripping all useable wood fiber over hundreds of thousands of acres annually and moving on with NO regard for the many impacts of their activity, or converting thousands of acres of native forest ecosystems into chemically dependent pine monocultures. This is all driven by humanity's blind wastefulness spurred by relentless corporate advertising that says "use all you want - we'll make more..." The pulp and paper industry in the US exports huge volumes of this timber to the Pacific Rim for processing and, in the process, destroys many local sustainable economies based on sawmills utilizing 60 - 80 year old trees for lumber, pallets and a host of other long-term industries making everything from pencils to flooring and furniture... It's the tenth largest industrty in Tennessee, where I live, employing 60,000 workers. Two dozen high-capacity chippers operating twenty-four hours a day employing less than 200 people could destroy those jobs and the forests supported by them in ten years. Luckily we have fought off all but about three so far but there are now over 140 mills operating in our region. I've watched your posts and I know you are aware of all this. For others, visit: http://www.geocities.com/rainforest.8056 What solidifies my resolve in this is the flippant way agroforesters peer through their blinders apparently unable or unwilling to see that the effects of widespread forest destruction and conversion to monocultures are bringing about many ominous ecological effects which will have far reaching impacts on all of us regardless of where we live. I have seen the documentaries, as I'm sure you have, of people in Haiti who toil all day in dust to chop up the stumps of what used to be verdant rainforests to accumulate wood to burn into charcoal which they carry over fifty miles on the back of a burro to Port Au Prince to sell for enough to buy a sack of rice to feed their family for a week ... then repeat the process. Is this the life we shall look forward to when the woodchippers and monoculturists have depleted the soils of the life-giving earth to little more than moondust? The Earth cannot "meet the demands" of the pulp and paper industry which are nothing more than the demands of a race of beings who will not accept the fact that resources on this planet are finite until they wake up to find them all gone even as commercials continue to try to soothe them into buying yet more. The woodchipping industry is a symptom - environmentalists who I work with are pointing out with increasing incontrovertible evidence that we have little time left to address the sickness. Around fifty years ago, Einstein said it best ... "Mankind will end by destroying the Earth..." Cheers from out in the country ... Bruce Wilkey
Mail converted by
MHonArc 1.1.0