(This article crossed an email list I’m on today. Dr. Power is one of the West’s pre-eminent environmental economists, and a welcome voice of reason and wisdom in environmental debates.)
By Thomas Michael Power
Thomas Michael Power is Professor of Economics and Chairman of the Economics Department at the University of Montana. He is the author of “Lost Landscapes and Failed Economies: The Search for a Value of Place.”
In the debate over how to manage our public forests, many timber industry officials, political leaders, and newspaper and other media commentators have asserted that irrational environmental obstructionists have been mindlessly shutting down the Forest Service’s commercial timber program.
These environmental critics often point to the “zero cut” objective espoused by many of environmental organizations to document that obstructionist objective. These folks, we are told, want to keep any trees from being cut down on public lands. Even on lands that already have extensive lumber road networks in place, where timber has been harvested for decades, and where new commercially designed plantations of young trees are already maturing, these environmentalists want to stop timber harvests. What sense does that make?
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