At the Cutting Edge: The Crisis in Canada’s Forests, revised edition,
by Elizabeth May, Key Porter Books, Toronto, 2005, 431 pages, paperback,
ISBN: 1-55263-645-3.
“The goal of the new era of forest management should be to reduce the
cut
substantially, while ensuring that employment is maintained and, ideally,
expanded, in a new sustainable forest industry.” (May, p. 351)
“In the last decade, a pronounced shift has occurred: dialogue and discussion
have begun to take place.” (May, p. 26)
“In order to improve society, it is absolutely essential to call things
for what
they are: in order to fight injustice one must be able to recognize it
and then
name it....Poor leadership is worse than no leadership at all because it
lures
the people to defeat in a dead end, making the failure appear as victory
-
stifling dreams, ideals, and creative possibilities.” Diane Cole, 1983
Introduction
The
original edition of this book, At the Cutting Edge: The Crisis in Canada’s
Forests, by Elizabeth May,
came out in 1998 and the
revised edition, which has added another 130 pages, has come out in 2005.
While
there are many good criticisms
of existing forestry practices in this book, and it is a book which forestry
activists will want a copy
of, the general line is that the situation on the ground is getting better,
not worse, and
that there is reason to
hope. As we are told, “The climate for respectful communication is growing.”
(p. 158)
The revised text has more
detail-piled-on-detail, which makes it more tedious for activists who are
usually
rooted in a particular province
or territory, and who are looking for the overall theoretical perspective
of a
forestry writer.
May has collaborated with mainstream environmental forest researchers across
the country to put forth a
view of industrial forestry,
province by province and in the territories. She claims to be the midwife,
rather than
the author of this book.
(p. 355) There are some progressive observations, which overall seem buried
in the
blow-by-blow text. For example,
the statements that the federal government “now acts primarily as a
propaganda arm of Canada’s
forest industry” (p. 20); or in B.C., “Industry is now in firm control
of our
public forests.”
(p. 283); and “No automatic association between First Nations ownership
interests and
more sustainable forestry
should be assumed.” (p. 340) Yet the viewpoint generally put forth,
is how to
make the existing forest
industry in Canada more accountable and viable, not whether or not there
should be a
forest industry. The world
as it exists is the only world for Elizabeth May. The data used by May
is quite
selective towards her own
views, as will be shown by her treatment of the history of forest struggles
in Nova
Scotia. In the revised edition,
her own politics is even more backward than in the first edition, with
its post-
Kyoto Protocol advocacy
of carbon emissions trading and of credits for Canada’s forests as “carbon
sinks.”
This carbon trading advocacy,
“Assigning
dollar values to carbon is essential in the effort to reduce
greenhouse gases” (pp.
64-5), feeds into the anti-Earth government and business perspective of
privatizing
the global commons in order
to commodify it. She also promotes forest certification via “market
forces” as
the way to go.
May has been promoting her revised book across the country. It is a book
which deserves critical scrutiny
because of its important
subject matter - forests and forestry - and because of the views being
given as the
path forward for forestry
activists and for the Canadian public.
Discussion: various forestries
Industrial
Forestry: In November of 1998, I gave a talk at Mount Allison in New
Brunswick, entitled
“Industrial
Forestry and a Critique of Natural Resource Management”. (Written
up as Green Web
Bulletin #66) This talk
commented quite extensively on the first edition of At the Cutting Edge.
In discussing
May’s book, I said that
it was “a good up-to-date source for understanding contemporary industrial
forestry in Canada, province
by province.”
The following overall view about industrial forestry
could be
seen after reading May’s
1998 book:
1. For every Canadian province and territory a political
elite decided, essentially in secret, that a forest industry
was needed.
2. The crown (public) land in each province was handed over
in long-term renewable forest leases to the forest industry.
(Prince Edward Island, because of its extensive private land
base, would be the only exception.) Indigenous interests and
the general public interest were not even part of the
discussion. Hydro and tax concessions were given to the new
forest industry, which was mainly pulpmill driven, and
publicly-funded roads were built. The provincial and federal
forestry services were then oriented towards serving the
interests of this industry.
3. The pulpmill industry oriented itself to serve a WORLD
market. Thus more and more wood supply was needed. There
could never be enough wood. Overcutting therefore becomes
the norm. Every species and size of tree eventually gets
brought into production. The "oriented strand board mills"
now flooding Canada, also in NB, show one end of this road.
These mills make trees into wood flakes, line them up, and
apply glue and pressure to make oriented strand board or chip
board. Any small tree can be utilized.
4. The result of the
above is the creation of wealth for
owners of pulpmills
and their politician friends, and the
creation of some relatively
high-paying jobs of about 25
dollars per hour for
some workers. But pulpmills also mean
the creation of pollution,
and sickness in people directly
affected by pulpmill
effluent and gas/particulate air
emissions - and often
these are native peoples. In addition,
pulpmills mean the
creation of ecological destruction,
because the forest
becomes oriented towards a single lowest
denominator use, which
is mainly pulp production. Forests
(and their wildlife)
become degraded in this process.
Forests were either
turned into barrens or, more generally,
were replaced by softwood
pulp farms or plantations.
Reviewing this revised edition, it became clear that the book is far from
the cutting edge of the theoretical
debate on forestry in Canada.
Deep Ecology Forestry: My perspective in the 1998 lecture, and in this
review, is of someone who is a
supporter of the non-human-centered
philosophy of deep ecology and is in fundamental opposition to the
practice and taken-for-granted
assumptions of the existing industrial capitalist forestry model in Canada.
Reading
At the Cutting Edge
shows that this is not the position of Elizabeth May.
Deep ecology is part of the larger green movement - the first social movement
in history to advocate a lower
material standard of living,
from the perspective of industrial consumerism. A deep ecology-inspired
forestry
would mean that non-economic
interests are primary in how we approach the living forest in a non-”resource”
manner. The non-human life
of the Acadian forest type in the Maritimes, for example (mischaracterized
by May
as found “only in Canada”,
see p.107), has its own inherent value, which is quite independent of how
we as
humans see its usefulness.
We humans must adapt ourselves to the forest and not expect that the forest
adapt
itself to us. Existing forestry
policy reflects the value priorities of industrial capitalist society.
These value priorities,
and their green critique,
must be part of any truly meaningful forestry discussion.
In the coming post-industrial, non-fossil fuel-dependent, sustainable,
ecocentric society, forests should be left
"unmanaged." In the long
term, this is the best for our fellow non-human community members, who
need the
forests as a home. When
we take wood out of the forest, all its ecological functions have to be
maintained. This is
not an anti-logging position,
but it can be seen as anti-logging in the context of not accepting the
unceasing growth
demands and population pressures
of present industrial society and the orientation to a world-wide consumer
market. This then becomes
reflected in logging practices and their intensity. For such a market,
there can never be
sufficient wood supply.
A sustainable forestry requires that it be embedded within a sustainable
society. My
position is anti-logging
in regard to how logging is presently carried out, whether industrial or
"alternative" (for
example, the "certification"
schemes of the Forest Stewardship Council and others, who fill a "green"
market
demand but leave the basic
industrial forestry model untouched).
People in the existing industrial capitalist society should be able to
earn a modest and respectful living from the
forest, but the focus should
be on restoration and low impact forestry, and other rethinking forestry
initiatives.
These would be steps on
the path to a deep ecology-inspired forestry in a future truly sustainable
society.
Unmanaged forests in an
ecocentric society mean that we need to manage ourselves as consuming human
beings.
May’s environmental role and the media
All her environmental life in Canada, May has made it clear that she wanted
to be a recognized public player.
She could be counted on
to participate in various government/industry alleged environmental initiatives
that were
and are being floated. There
is, for example, her promotional role in the mainly government/forest industry
driven “National Forest
Strategy” (pp. 341-343), misleadingly called “a non-governmental effort”
(p. 341)
and one of the “Signs
of Hope” for our author. The Sierra Club is playing, we are told, “an
active role” in the
implementation of this Strategy.
A group like the National Aboriginal Forestry Association, which through
its
past history has shown it
wants “in” to industrial forestry, brings, along with May, so-called legitimacy
to the
Strategy.
May also has been involved in various “sustainable development” projects,
which, following the Brundtland
Report, tie environmental
protection to continued economic growth, consumerism, human-centeredness
and an
expanded human population.
Such scams (Stora-Enso in Nova Scotia has been a big sustainable development
fan) bring business, governments,
organized labour and mainstream environmentalists together around a “round
table.” May lends her name
and participation to provide some kind of legitimacy, and she obtains a
“national”
platform or name recognition.
The crowning jewel of “recognition” for May, was being made an advisor
to the
federal minister of the
environment in the former Mulroney conservative government. What her environmental
life generally shows, is
that one is only invited into any game if one accepts and defends the rules
of the game.
May notes about her own
text: “On an individual basis, many forest-industry executives share
the concerns
expressed in this book.”
(p. 40) These executives must have been quite pleased to see the statement
that
“clear-cutting is an
appropriate harvesting method for some forest types.” (p. 18)
What this rule-defined environmental game has often meant for more radical
environmental activists in Nova
Scotia, is that when the
heat comes on in a particular struggle, May can be counted on to throw
a very public
lifeline, essentially saying
that this society can reform itself and does not need massive revolutionary
change. We
are led to believe that
existing institutional arrangements will allow the citizenry to participate,
but it is really only
in a token manner. For example,
in the Sable Gas Project, she argued for participation in the environmental
assessment process, no matter
that this process routinely shafts ecology and social justice, and blesses
and
anoints the process of economic
"development." (See Green Web Bulletin #62, December 1997,
“Environmental
Hearings and Existential Dilemmas: The Sable Gas Project”,
which argued against
participation.) Withdrawing
from the highly structured process (newspaper reports said that on any
one day
of the Sable Gas formal
hearings there were about 65 lawyers present), would be to deny the environmental
assessment process legitimacy.
May also does not give an anti-capitalist critique in her numerous public
commentaries.
An e-mail note, written by a Sierra Club functionary, posted to several
lists promoting the 2005 Annual
General Meeting of the Sierra
Club in Nova Scotia, without apparent irony, refers to “media darling
Elizabeth May” who,
among others, will be addressing the annual meeting. When someone comes
forth to
play a leading public role
in a movement, a heavy responsibility comes with this, as others look for
guidance
and ask “what to do?” May
is always in the media speaking in the name of the environmental
movement.
While her contributions
have been many, including on forest issues, she presents herself as a kind
of heroic
individual and not as part
of a collective. She does not espouse any philosophical tradition which
others can
support, such as deep ecology
(not mentioned in At the Cutting Edge). We are instead being told,
that
there is no overall philosophical
theory to which we can orient. Yet it is deep ecology which continues to
inspire and orient the radical
environmental movement, such as Earth First! (and the emerging Federal
Green
Party of Canada) and which
inspired the 1993 book Clearcut: The Tragedy Of Industrial Forestry,
a
text which May references
several times in her own book. (Charlie Restino and I co-authored the article
on
Nova Scotia forestry in
Clearcut.)
Not acknowledging the philosophical opposition to the destructiveness
of industrial capitalist
society is not only self-serving, but a reflection of the nihilism and
arrogance of
postmodern society in the
mainstream environmental movement in Canada.
Selective memory and unfounded judgements for Nova Scotia forestry
Selective Memory: Nova Scotia is Elizabeth May’s “baseline” forestry
province, scene of many past
battles. So it is a big
surprise, from a Nova Scotia perspective, that in this edition of At
the Cutting Edge,
May does not mention, let
alone analyse, the important, although reactionary book by academics Anders
Sandberg and Peter Clancy,
Against
the Grain: Foresters and Politics in Nova Scotia, published in 2000.
This book discusses seven
foresters who have helped shape forestry policy. It claims that they were
“against
the grain” of past
and current industrial and government forestry orthodoxies in Nova Scotia.
But this book is
also an unrelenting attack
and misrepresentation of the extensive contributions by environmentalists
to forest
discussions in the province.
(See the analysis of Against the Grain, “Nova
Scotia Forestry and
Anti-Environmentalism”,
as Green Web Bulletin #76 on our web site.) May, while ignoring Against
the
Grain , has a number
of references to an earlier, more progressive publication edited by Sandberg
and Clancy,
the 1992 book Trouble
in the Woods: Forest Policy and Social Conflict in Nova Scotia and New
Brunswick. (Perhaps
as well as selective memory, this also shows a lack of updated research.)
Another example of selective memory is shown in the description of her
own role in past forestry and
biocide battles. She provides
no critical self-assessment. For example, in the past she promoted Btk
forest
spraying, in opposition
to more ecocentric forestry activists in the province, as in a letter to
The
Chronicle
Herald of December
4, 1982: “Use of the biological agent B.t. can protect foliage without
killing
budworm predators and
other non-target species.” There are many so-called non-target moths
and
butterflies killed by this
biological spray with a chemical component. No deep ecology-inspired forestry
activist will accept any
form of forest spraying, “biological” or otherwise. May has a basic anthropocentric
perspective. She continually
refers to forests as a “resource” in her book, which translated means Nature
is
there for human consumption,
even if forests are to be used “sustainably.”
A further example of May’s selective memory in At the Cutting Edge,
would be the taking of the analysis
of pulpwood forestry given
in
the 1983 Green Web Bulletin #10, “Pulpwood Forestry In Nova Scotia”
(a
presentation to the provincial
Royal Commission on Forestry), without acknowledgement, and applying it
to
every province in Canada.
(This analysis was later published by the Gorsebrook Research Institute,
Saint
Mary’s University, under
the title “Pulpwood Forestry In Nova Scotia and the Environmental
Question”.)
At the Cutting Edge
also seems to have been significantly influenced by the 1991 Green Web
Bulletin #26,
“Pulp and Paper Primer:
Nova Scotia.” This document was a detailed analysis (the first)
of the various pulp
mill processes in Nova Scotia
and their environmental implications. While two references to Bulletin
#26 are
acknowledged, other data
given in the Bulletin and used in May’s text, are presented unreferenced
to this Bulletin.
Let me make it clear, I
do not believe in copyright or “ownership” of ideas. All of us draw heavily
from the works
of others. But analysis
should not be presented as original when it is not. May does not even reference
in her
book the Green Web as a
contact organization in the province or give the web site, which contains
a number of
forestry and biocide publications,
and which gives a deep ecology perspective on forests, wildlife and industrial
forestry.
There is a basic romanticization of her own past role in forest biocide
issues in Nova Scotia as shown in this
and other books, e.g. the
1982 Budworm Battles. She has never in print, to my knowledge, looked
critically
at herself, from the perspective
given by Diane Cole in the quote which introduces this review, concerning
the
1982 court battle in Cape
Breton over forest herbicide spraying with its out-of-court settlement/capitulation
with
Stora, or any other environmental
involvement. Perhaps more importantly, May has led the mainstream
environmental movement in
a definite direction of engagement with industrial capitalist society,
despite the fact
that it is this society
which is destroying our Earth. Global warming will not be ended by the
industrial capitalists
trading, on our behalf,
carbon credits between themselves. This society has to be dismantled and
rebuilt on a
totally new philosophical
basis. May’s book does not point its readers in such a direction, in its
mainstream
analysis of industrial forestry.
Unfounded
Judgements: These concern ‘things are getting better’ statements by
May in her book, mainly
referring to Nova Scotia,
that I consider to be erroneous. As I have written elsewhere, industrial
forestry is
personal for me and my family.
We live in rural Nova Scotia, on an old hill farm of about 130 acres which
has
reverted back to woods,
but we are surrounded by clearcuts and by the detritus and sounds of industrial
forestry. We have had to
engage in personal battles to stop forestry companies using biocides adjacent
to where
we live. When the wind blows
the wrong way, and with certain atmospheric conditions, we can smell the
sulphur
from the local Kimberly-Clark
kraft pulp mill. (Previously called Scott Paper, and since 2004 renamed
Neenah
Paper Of Canada Ltd.) We
observe the effects of clear-cut industrial forestry in every direction
around us. So
when someone with the public
stature of Elizabeth May says that “A number of trends give cause for
hope”
(p.334), it does not correspond
with my reality. Talking with the forest industry, in my experience, does
not lead
to change. It is another
strategy by the forest exploiters to defuse the environmental critique,
with those
environmentalists, like
May, willing to walk the plank. Unlike May, I do not see any path of significant
forestry
transformation underway
in Canada. As I cycle about on the logging roads surrounding our home and
look at
the wanton destruction left
by industrial forestry operations, I ask myself - how can we ever turn
around all the
ecological problems being
spawned by industrial capitalist society, if we cannot even change industrial
forestry
in an affluent society like
Canada? That same industrial forestry, which many people have expended
so much
energy opposing, with our
demonstrations, boycotts, blockades, conferences, discussion papers and
critiques?
How can it still be accepted,
for example, that a so-called forestry operation in a country like Canada
leaves no
“forest”, that is, forest
cover behind?
The reality of present-day industrial forestry in Nova Scotia is that despite
the work of hundreds of dedicated
activists over about 30
years, clear-cutting and forestry spraying (usually herbicides) continue
as routine industrial
practice for the provincial
government and for the pulp and paper companies. (Stora-Enso was supposed
to have
stopped herbicide spraying
in 1997, because, we were told, the company “wanted consistency in its
international operations”
but,
it seems, in 2005 insecticide spraying still takes place.) Cape Breton
itself has a
government-sponsored insecticide
Btk
(Bacillus thuringiensis variety kurstaki) “test”
forest spraying program
this summer, directed against
the black-headed budworm on crown forest lands leased to the largest pulp
and
paper company in Nova Scotia.
Yet frequent insect blooms are part of the industry-driven, even-aged,
softwood,
narrow species range, pulpwood
forest.
May uses the Cape Breton area, and the Stora-Enso pulp and paper company,
as an example of how things
are getting better in industrial
forestry: “Previous bad actors, such as Stora, have improved enormously.”
(p. 157) She cites the so-called
community liaison committee established by this company to illustrate the
point.
Yet Stora still clear-cuts
and does not publicly oppose herbicide spraying by the province or by the
other pulp
and paper companies like
Kimberley-Clark, Bowater and Irving. In the recent past, Stora has threatened
to shut
down parts of its overall
operation, if it did not get concessions on electricity rates, or if the
mill could not get
monetary concessions by
re-opening signed contracts with its mill workers and those woodworkers
supplying
pulp to its mill. Stora
has a crown lease of up to 1,700,000 acres, which stipulates that not more
than one
percent of the lease can
be withdrawn by the province without the consent of the company. I am not
aware that
Stora has repudiated this
crown lease or even this one percent clause, which could be used to establish
more
protected areas or park
lands in the province. May’s claim that in Nova Scotia, the province has
taken steps
“to regulate the worst
of bad logging practices on Crown and now on private lands” (p. 157)
is a
meaningless feel-good comment.
But it does feed into the fiction that the situation for the forests is
improving.
Nothing could be further
from the truth.
Two other unfounded judgements which do not relate specifically to Nova
Scotia are a) May’s repeating of
the “wise use” perspective
on tree spiking, speaking of this as “an extreme tactic” and giving further
mileage to
the “creating a serious
hazard to loggers” (p. 215) mantra; and her incorrect claim that Wiebo
Ludwig
headed up the “only campaign
of eco-sabotage in Canadian history.” (p. 269) This would be to discount
the contribution of the
Squamish Five plus many other followers of Earth First! and Ed Abbey in
Canada who,
without seeking public credit,
pursue various forms of ecotage that are non-violent against people.
Conclusion
There is a lot to learn from reading At the Cutting Edge, about
various aspects of industrial forestry in
Canada, province by province.
However, this book is not on the cutting edge of the theoretical debates
about
forests and forestry in
Canada. Over-cutting is intrinsic to the forest industry, because of the
general values of
industrial capitalist society
which shape this forestry. “Grow or die”, with the whole over-consumptive
world
as the market, is the basic
forest industry orientation. With such a perspective, over-cutting must
become the
norm, not the result of
some miscalculation, as May argues, namely that the industry uses future
growth from
“silviculture” rather than
growth rates that are natural. (p. 200) There can be no real forest “sustainability”
within an expansionary,
human-centered industrial capitalist society. Things are not getting better
for the forests
in Canada. And unfortunately,
Elizabeth May has no alternative philosophical vision grounded in deep
ecology
to show any new path forward.
July, 2005
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