But personal observations, even if anecdotal and not statistically significant, are compelling too. When Tara and I camped above the Arctic Circle in June 2005, we saw and heard firsthand evidence of shrinking glaciers, melting permafrost, and newly arrived plant and animal species. Arctic peoples speak of global warming as a well-established fact that has changed their habitat and already threatens their way of life.
Yet, despite the overwhelming consensus of climatologists and the most painstaking assessment of scientific literature in history, in 2005 the media continued to treat climate change as if it is a controversy, as if there is still doubt. They give far more space than is warranted to the small number of “skeptics” who deny global warming is occurring. This is tragic.
Accepting that the danger is real, society can look for solutions. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions means buying time to switch to alternative, nonpolluting energy sources and enjoying the direct benefits of a cleaner environment, better health, and the conservation of valuable, nonrenewable fossil fuels. If by some miracle the crisis passes, those nonrenewable fossil fuels will still be there, our homes and businesses will be more efficient, and our environment will be cleaner. Acting on climate change is a win-win situation, whereas doing nothing will make the corrective measures much more difficult, much more expensive, and perhaps too late.
After the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, an intergovernmental negotiating committee was established to meet and work out a framework within which the climate convention could be assessed. In 1995, the Conference of the Parties (cop) to the United Nations Framework on Climate Change was established to meet annually in a different country. At the meetings, terms of the protocol were refined, progress assessed and scientific information updated. The first cop meeting in North America was held in Montreal from the end of November to early December 2005.
Thousands of delegates, NGO participants and press attended, and DSF was a prominent participant. In addition to ten staff members, eight board members took part in the meetings in different capacities. Staff worked diligently to make our position known: the Kyoto process must carry on, emissions in the industrialized nations should be cut by 25 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050 if we are to minimize the consequences of the buildup of greenhouse gases. It was gratifying to see that there was no longer a debate about whether climate change is happening or whether we should reduce our emissions. The big questions were how, and how much by when.
Stephen Bronfman, as a board member, sponsored a breakfast for businesspeople concerned about climate change. More than four hundred people attended to hear another board member, Ray Anderson. As a very successful businessman, Ray could speak to the audience as one of them and his message of “doing well by doing good” resonated strongly with the audience.
Soon after being elected, George W. Bush indicated that he would not ratify Kyoto and wanted to ignore the entire process. By the Montreal meetings, the Protocol had been ratified by enough countries to make it international law. The large U.S. delegation in Montreal had no official status but actively worked to derail the Kyoto Protocol as a failure and to recruit other countries to its plan to seek new, cleaner technologies that would reduce the need to cut back on fossil fuel use. As representatives of the most powerful nation on Earth, the U.S. contingent had a lot of clout, but the country is also the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and therefore has a big responsibility, as Prime Minister Paul Martin stated in his opening address. In the end, despite the American pressure, the rest of the world united to back the Kyoto process and continue the path toward much deeper cuts. It was a crowning achievement for the delegates and may very well be looked back upon as a watershed moment.
MANY OF US IN the David Suzuki Foundation cut our teeth on battles over the future of British Columbia's forests. From South Moresby and Stein Valley to the Khutzeymateen and Clayoquot Sound, one forest after another in pristine areas had become threatened, sparking a public outcry. It seemed natural for the DSF to be involved in forestry issues.
Taking the cue from our work on fisheries, we first asked the question, what is the economic position of forestry in the province today? Even though the number of jobs and relative contribution of tax revenues from forestry were steadily declining, the media continued to widely report that forestry contributed fifty cents of every tax dollar in British Columbia's coffers. Dr. Richard Schwindt and Dr. Terry Heaps, economists at Simon Fraser University, agreed to do an analysis of the forest industry, and we published it in 1996 as “Chopping Up the Money Tree.” They showed that the province's economy had become much more diverse than it was fifty years earlier, and that British Columbia's revenues from forestry were about five cents of every tax dollar.
The rant that environmentalists damage the economy and threaten jobs did not reflect reality. Forestry jobs were being lost, but the volume of wood cut was steadily increasing. The province's chief forester was well aware that logging practices greatly exceeded the renewable level. Huge machines were replacing men and working tirelessly and with deadly efficiency, aided by computers. Worse, despite legislation to prevent the export of raw logs, more and more were being shipped to other countries where high-quality jobs were created to process that wood. Every raw log exported cost B.C. jobs and economic potential. The DSF did an analysis showing that Washington State created two and a half times more employment per tree than did B.C., and California five times more.
It bothered me that Canadians, who have some of the best wood in the world, purchase finished products from Scandinavia. I don't believe we are so backward that we can't develop our own lines of wood products, using our own materials. We should use our precious raw logs far more conservatively and ensure that every tree cut creates a maximum number of jobs.
Jim Fulton recruited the dean of arts at UBC, the distinguished scholar Pat Marchak, to perform an exhaustive analysis of forestry in British Columbia. She ended up writing a book in 1999 with Scott Aycock and Deborah Herbert, Falldown: Forest Policy in British Columbia, widely considered the authoritative document on the subject. Pat concluded that a reduction in the volume of wood cut was needed because the current levels were not sustainable. She recommended that the use of wood be diversified to generate more jobs per cubic yard.
Could an ecoforestry code be established that might allow logging while maintaining the integrity of the forest? In 1990, DSF staff member Ronnie Drever wrote a report published as “A Cut Above,” which outlined nine basic principles of what has since come to be called ecosystem-based management (EBM). Although parks and other protected areas, if sufficiently large and interconnected, can help somewhat to protect the biodiversity that sustains our economies, the future is bleak unless land outside parks is developed carefully and sustainably through EBM.
Even before “A Cut Above,” we knew it was possible to log extensively in a sustainable fashion. Vancouver Island forester Merv Wilkinson has logged his forest selectively since the 1950s and removed the equivalent of his entire forest, yet has more board feet of timber growing now than before he began. In Oregon, the family-owned company Collins Pines has been in forestry for 150 years and today does some US$250 million in annual business, yet its forests are considered among the most pristine in the state. Thousands of employees earn a living from those forests, and the company remains globally competitive though all logging is carried out selectively, not through clear-cutting.