There were quite a number of very positive responses to the points. I received comments such as "right on and well expressed. Your reflections focus on the very things that seem to be left unsaid (about ecosystem management)."
On December 28, Dave Iverson sent out a number of responses to the piece, some of which, as might be expected, expressed alternative views. Some misinterpreted my comments as arguing for a return to the status quo, which I was definitely not intending.
Several of the comments challenged the notion that reductions in commodity outputs from federal lands would be translated into increased ecosystem impacts elsewhere. The gist of these comments was that increased prices for commodities that would result from federal supply reductions would act to encourage more efficient use of non-federal resources, as well as lead to more use of substitutes for wood, for example.
Several others stated that my paper did not adequately recognize that we have an obligation not just to meet human demands for resources, but to seek ways to reduce those demands as well.
One person responded to my comment that non-action will lead to continued fuel build-ups and forest health problems by asserting that the forest health and fuel build-up problems in eastern Oregon are the direct result of aggressive Forest Service management actions.
Several expressed the view that the concept of resource targets is inherently in conflict with EM. And still others challenged the idea that committing to a level of resource outputs from the federal lands will really assure the stability of local communities.
The expressions of concern people raised were legitimate and heart-felt. They deserve a thoughtful response. Unfortunately, responding appropriately to every comment would take too much space. But I would like to respond to some of the major points made related to the interelationship of federal management to that of other lands and to community stability. In a future piece, I will discuss the issue of fuel build-ups, ecosystem health and human intervention.
1. Will reductions in federal commodity outputs have adverse environmental impacts on ecosystems elsewhere?
Cindy Swanson, Mike Skinner, and several others all wrote on some aspect of this question. Mike and others argued, in effect, that we shouldn't worry about the environmental implications of reduced federal timber harvest because the invisible hand of the private market will probably work things out to minimize those impacts. Cindy Swanson and Peter Trenchi argued that efficient allocation of natural resources requires that the environmental costs of producing them be factored into their prices.
There are two separate dimensions of this issue. One is whether there will be significant non-federal resource impacts from the reduction of federal commodity outputs. The second is whether such effects should be a consideration in decisions affecting federal lands under ecosystem management.
Since most of the comments focused on reductions in federal timber harvest levels, before responding to specific comments, the following is a brief summary of the role that markets have historically played in U.S. timber consumption/production:
Because of increasing real prices for wood, by the 1950s per capita wood consumption in the U.S. was half what it had been in 1900. But since the 1950s, per capita wood use has been relatively stable, and has even risen in the last two decades. This rise is due primarily to increased use of fuelwood, which rose dramatically during the energy crisis of the 1970s and has remained high since then. In 1970, fuelwood comprised less than 5 percent of the volume of wood harvested. Today it is about one-fifth of harvest volume and accounts for about 3 percent of U.S energy production -- roughly comparable to hydropower. About two-thirds of wood energy production is associated with industrial processes.
Federal forests did not become important in the national timber supply picture until after World War II. To meet the housing demands created by returning GI's and a booming economy, National Forest timber sale levels rose dramatically in the 1950s, from about 3 billion board feet in 1950 to about 10 BBF by 1960. By the early 1960s, federal forests were providing the equivalent of about 25 percent of the lumber and plywood consumed in the U.S.
In spite of the myth that timber sales rose dramatically under Reagan/Bush, federal timber sale levels were relatively stable between 1960 and 1987. For the three decade period from 1958 through 1988, decadal average sale levels showed a gradual decline (12.1 BBF during the 1960's, 11.0 BBF during the 1970's, and 10.7 BBF during the 1980's). This changed dramatically in the late 1980s as public concerns over protecting remaining old-growth forests and other values resulted in appeals and litigation, which caused a virtual free-fall in federal timber sales.
Because per capita wood consumption has remained stable since the 1950s, U.S. consumption today is at historically high levels. We consume enormous amounts of wood in this country. On a tonnage basis, U.S. wood production is roughly comparable to the total production of most other raw materials combined -- iron and steel, aluminum, plastics, concrete, and copper and other metals. So any significant substitution of these other materials for wood, would have environmental consequences of their own. Most other materials require 3-10 times more energy to produce than does wood.
Let's briefly look at the use of wood in the U.S. as compared to the rest of the world. The U.S., with about 7 percent of the world's forests, leads all other nations in both wood production and consumption. While we meet most of our needs domestically, we are usually a slight net importer of wood -- mostly softwoods from Canada. The U.S. also leads most other countries in the proportion of forests reserved from timber production. With a little over 12 percent of the world's temperate forests, the U.S. accounts for about half of the world's temperate forests removed from timber production.
Per capita consumption of wood in the U.S. is high -- about double the average for other developed countries and about four times the world average. While this does indicate a considerable opportunity to reduce our per capita consumption, such a shift would not be without its own environmental consequences. Other developed countries consume relatively more concrete, steel, and other materials in housing than does the U.S. Most wood substitutes take anywhere from 3-10 times more energy to produce than does wood. Dr. Peter Koch has estimated that for every billion board feet of wood that is replaced by wood substitutes, U.S. energy consumption will increase by 720 million gallons of oil, and carbon dioxide emissions would increase by 7.5 million tons (Wood vs. Non-Wood Materials in U.S. Residential Construction: Some Energy Related Implications, Center For International Trade in Forest Products, Working Paper No. 361).
One person stated that, "Mr. McCleery argues that if the national forests do not meet wood demands, someone else will, with increased global resource damage. This ignores the elasticity of wood product demand as well as the ingenuity of the market in allocating demand."
He then stated that reduced federal harvests have resulted in increased harvesting on private lands in the PNW, but asserted that such harvesting is probably less environmentally damaging than if it were still occurring on federal lands.
But whether such harvest is, or is not, more environmentally benign than federal harvest misses the point I was trying to make -- that is that harvest replacement is occurring and is having environmental impacts elsewhere. There is no question that, due to reduced federal timber harvests, private landowners in the PNW are busily slicking off large volumes of immature timber. But rather than dismissing such impacts as inconsequential, I was arguing that understanding the environmental consequences associated with such harvest transfer should be an important dimension of ecosystem management. Such harvesting does have watershed and other on-site and off-site impacts and it is going on within the same regional landscapes where the federal lands are located, so there are ecosystem implications, as well. And social consequences also, since it is very likely to be unsustainable at its current level. An even larger amount of harvest transfer is going on in the American South, raising sustainability questions, since softwood harvest now exceeds growth in that region.
Mike Skinner stated that my comments about the likely environmental effects of wood substitutes were "a little dated" because they didn't recognize the inroads that steel framing is having in traditional wood markets. Mike then gave a detailed discussion of the advantages of steel over wood that sounded almost like a steel industry ad, eg. less waste, superior earthquake resistance, cheaper, uses recycled steel, etc.
The facts Mike cited unfortunately do not tell a complete story. There is no question that steel framing is becoming competitive with wood at the higher prices we have been seeing lately, and has been making some inroads into traditional lumber markets. Most experts would agree that when properly designed and constructed, both wood and steel give comparable earthquake resistance and other performance characteristics in residential construction. While steel is less energy efficient in place, such problems can probably be overcome with design changes.
But the fact that reduced federal harvests are causing an increase in harvests on private land in the PNW, the South and elsewhere, is demonstration that my concerns are not "dated" as Mike suggests. If anything, Mike's are speculative. But even if the projections Mike cites do come true, and steel in the next several years captures 5 percent of the lumber market, that will still not make up for the loss in federal harvests, which traditionally have comprised about 25 percent of the market. That timber will be harvested from ecosystems somewhere.
There is another dimension, as well. Even the steel industry admits that while most steel studs are made from recycled products, they still require about 3 times the energy to produce as does wood and, as described previously, have their own set of environmental consequences.
Cindy Swanson wrote that current timber prices on both federal and private lands are "artificially low" because they do not reflect the environmental costs of harvesting it. Cindy argues that if the off-site costs of timber harvesting, such as soil erosion and impacts on wildlife, were properly factored into timber prices, it would "result in a sustainable level of harvest. And, yes, public lands (FS) will play a role in this supply."
I agree with Cindy that the environmental cost of producing a product, whether it be timber, steel, or fossil fuels, ought somehow to be factored into prices paid by the consumer. I have heard proposals for years to include the environmental costs of production/consumption in consumer prices (we talked about it in graduate school in the late 1960s -- which I guess dates me). But how to identify and value such environmental "externalities" has always been a problem, let alone how to include them in the cost.
There has been little apparent progress being made in that direction, however, due both to technical problems (how to put a S value on those "externalities"), and to lack of political will. We have seen some interest in incorporating disposal costs for products into the purchase price, but even that relatively straight-forward idea, requiring comparatively simple analysis, seems to go begging.
Perhaps readers of Eco-Watch have some suggestions as to how to practically do what Cindy has suggested. For such an approach to work, all materials which compete with wood would need also to reflect their own environmental costs. If that were done, I suspect that wood might come out pretty competitively, given the energy costs of alternatives. But who knows?
In conclusion, I believe the answer to the first question posed at the beginning of this section (will market forces act to reduce or eliminate the environmental impacts of reduced federal commodity outputs?) the answer is clearly no. Even with higher prices and more efficient use, there will still be environmental consequences related to the reduction in commodity outputs from federal lands.
2. Should the off-site environmental consequences on other ecosystems/ownerships of producing, or not producing, resource outputs from the federal lands be taken into account under EM? Are planned resource outputs incompatible with EM?
The answer to the first question posed by this paper -- are reduced federal resource outputs having environmental effects elsewhere? -- is relatively straightforward and can be determined based on factual evidence. The two questions posed above are more subjective and, based on peoples' comments, there is no clear consensus as to how they should be answered.
Some would call for special efforts to seek to reduce the human consumption side of the equation. Others feel that the idea of resource output targets and EM are inherently incompatible. Still others feel that while there is no inherent conflict between EM and targets, it is all important as to how those targets are established. I believe the latter view is correct.
It is clear that there are some people out there who will seek to cast anyone suggesting the desirability of resource targets as a proponent of top-down, or "pre-determined," or "hard-wired" targets established without considering the capability of the land to sustain them in concert with other appropriate values and environmental services. Pre-determined targets, where they occurred, were as inappropriate in the past as they would be under EM. It's a strawman to seek to stereotype all those calling for a NF planning process that considers human material needs and the needs of local communities for certainty as advocating resource abuse. It polarizes and gets us no closer to consensus. We don't need it.
There are those who are suggesting that under EM, resource outputs will be much less predictable than in the past. Some of those same people are also saying that for local communities to survive under the reduced commodity outputs expected under EM, they must diversify economically and move to more "value added" products from the raw material that does come from the federal lands. There is an inherent conflict between encouraging the considerable investment required to install value added capacity and then saying that the raw material needed to make that investment worthwhile will be unpredictable. Such investment seldom will occur under those circumstances.
There is no question that the federal government cannot guarantee the stability of communities or insulate them from the larger social and economic forces that may affect their future. But a relative assurance of a reliable level of resource outputs from those lands (based on the capability of the land to sustain them in concert with other appropriate values and environmental services) can certainly contribute to a more stable economic future for communities that are surrounded by, or adjacent to, the federal lands. The lack of such assurance can certainly destabilize these communities, as recent history has graphically demonstrated.
But even under EM, the National Forests should have more than just a coincidental role in meeting human material needs. And it will remain important to have goals and output targets so communities can plan for their own futures. This will be particularly important in the West where federal lands often comprise more than half the land base.
And in setting such goals and targets, consideration should be given to their affects, both on those adjacent communities and on the environmental consequences that those outputs (or lack thereof) will likely have on ecosystems elsewhere.
When I wrote the original paper, I thought that these were modest ideas, not intended to be revolutionary. Obviously a chord was struck. I hope it leads to useful discussion.