September 19, 2000 The Evergreen Magazine by Jim Petersen: The Globalization of Anti-globalization.
By Jim Petersen
Editor, Evergreen Magazine
Executive Director, The Evergreen Foundation
Lumber Trade Issues Session
Pacific Logging Congress Cruise
Reaching Across Borders in the New Millennium
September 19, 2000
The topic this morning is the status of lumber trade. Because this is not a topic with which I have daily familiarity, two qualifiers accompany my remarks.
First, I am not an economist. So I don’’t have any charts or graphs that illustrate, quantify or forecast the movement of forest products from one country to the other. But I can tell you that forest products –– and here I include the export and import of raw logs - has become a global enterprise. I can also tell you that competition between the global giants is fierce. In fact, competition is one of the driving forces behind the recent wave of consolidation that we’’ve seen in the industry.
Second, the perspective I offer is distinctly American and probably overly cynical. You see I come from the most consumptive society in the history of civilization. Remarkably, we import most of our raw materials from other countries: chemicals, minerals, oil and, increasingly, raw logs. We do this because we are both arrogant and ignorant. While most of these raw materials are present in abundance inside our own borders, we’’re more interested in protecting our environment than we are any risky schemes like drilling for oil, mining gold or harvesting our own timber. We happily turn a blind eye to environmental degradation and slave labor prevalent in Third World countries that export their raw materials to us. Increasingly, its hard to tell where our "Out of sight, out of mind" trade policy ends and our "Not in my back yard" environmental policy begins.
What’s even more amazing is the corollary: our forest policy. We expect that the world will continue to deliver an abundance of high quality forest products to our ports while our forests burn to the ground because we believe wildfires to be natural phenomena and therefore less harmful than logging.
I wonder where we will get our raw materials in the years to come, as the poorest and most populous nations begin to lift themselves from poverty, becoming aggressive consumers in their own right.
Before I proceed, I should say a few things about Evergreen and the Evergreen Foundation for the benefit of those who may not have heard my presentation yesterday morning. The Foundation exists for only one reason: to help advance public understanding and support for science-based forestry. To this end, we publish Evergreen, a periodic journal that focuses on issues and events that are impacting forestry, forest communities and the forest products industry. Our core audience numbers about 75,000, though it is not unusual for single issues to reach several hundred thousand people. As such it is likely that Evergreen is the most widely read forestry magazine in the world.
My remarks this morning concern an emerging political force that you probably haven’’t thought about: the globalization of anti-globalization. Let me set the stage for you by recounting a 1988 I made a prediction that made me the laughing stock of most that work in our industry’’s Ivory Towers. I said U.S. environmentalists had two goals in mind: first to bring an end to harvesting in our National Forests, and second, to force private landowners to de-emphasize timber production in favor of non-commodity resources, namely threatened or endangered species.
No one is laughing today. The federal Endangered Species Act has become the centerpiece in both U.S. trade and environmental policy. No other force has so influenced or re-directed global trade in forest products. And the only things left standing in the way of "zero harvest" in National Forests are the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives and this year’’s disastrous fire season.
Now I am going to make another ridiculous prediction. If Al Gore is elected President of the United States, most industrial timberland owners currently operating in the U.S. will begin moving their operations offshore –– in effect joining the ranks of those who currently export finished products to the United States. There won’’t be much choice in the matter. Gore-appointed Supreme Court justices will determine that so-called "environmental justice" trumps Constitutionally guaranteed property rights. In the end, the industry may simply export itself. Lord knows there are a lot of emerging nations that would love to have our manufacturing technology. Largely unnoticed, several major US forest product manufacturers are already moving capital offshore, investing it in state-of-the-art plants in countries where they are made welcome: So for loggers, the question is not if you will work, but what language you will speak on the job.
All of this is certainly good news for nations that are interested in luring US companies to their countries. But a new force has emerged that may alter the course of events: the globalization of anti-globalization. You saw a raw display of this new power last winter at the World Trade Organization’’s brick-throwing contest in downtown Seattle. Or as the Wall Street Journal dubbed the event: WTO Woodstock.
There is no consensus as to how this force will impact the future of trade in forest products, but the fact that such a diverse group of causes found a way to get together under a single banner is revealing. Among the causes found "celebrating diversity" in the streets of downtown Seattle: Toxic waste, debt forgiveness, genetic engineering, child labor, gay and lesbian rights, threatened indigenous tribes, abortion on demand, the Internet, the rise of multinational corporations, endangered species, trees, turtles and AIDS. What is most astonishing is that this cabal had the tacit approval of the President of the United States who a month earlier –– with a wink and a nod –– welcomed and praised all of these protestors as friends of the earth.
The Journal’’s Bob Davis offered this view, which is one I’’ve often considered in my own moments of frustration. "The explosion of advocacy groups in Seattle may be a sign that we have entered into yet another of those eras where so many people are so rich and comfortable –– especially in the West- that they can afford to fixate on notions of how awful everything is. Presumably, this is the flip side of the phenomenon that occurs in times of great danger and stress, as in Hungary during World War II, where a notoriously suicide-prone population had so many real problems to worry about that they stopped killing themselves."
But as another Journal writer observed, "If the current fixation on the WTO and free trade as the font for all evil were just a passing spasm, we could kick back and enjoy the show. The trouble is, for every activist on the streets of Seattle, there are hundreds of millions of hard-working people the world over whose own chances for the future depend very much on whether their country grows more prosperous. That means their lives depend on whether there will be a market for the goods they grow or produce. So while activists claim the moral high ground in Seattle, they will be standing atop the prone bodies of people who hunger for the fruits of tree trade."
If Seattle’’s very mixed message has you confused you are not alone. How are rational people to square the conjoined views of such disparate voices: they are for feeding the starving masses but against genetically modified seed crops. For higher wages, but against the extraction of natural resources that is central to the creation of all wealth. For better working conditions, better health care, higher standards for keeping the air clean and the water pure –– but against capitalism, the only economic engine to ever successfully lift people out of poverty and squalor.
Amid all of the brick throwing and angst, few journalists assigned to cover the WTO meeting noticed that environmental leaders from the biggest organizations were meeting behind closed doors, setting aside bitter differences that surfaced during negotiations leading to US ratification of the North America Free Trade Agreement. More moderate groups, including the National Wildlife Federation, backed the agreement because it was the first trade agreement to include some environmental protections, while other more radical groups, most notably Greenpeace, opposed the treaty, arguing that the environmental provisions lacked teeth and that the treaty itself lacked sufficient enforcement power.
Rejoining forces gives environmentalists around the world a kind of power and cache they have lacked since environmentalism’’s legislative heyday in the 1970s. Where we are headed from here is hard to say, but if what is happening in the US is an indicator of things to come globally –– and it usually is –– the line between trade and environmental policy will become increasingly blurred. Witness President Clinton’’s decision to withdraw his proposal for fast track authority in trade negotiations. He gave up on the idea in the face of opposition from the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth and the World Wildlife Fund –– groups that opposed one another on NAFTA but found a way to bury the hatchet in Seattle.
But these groups –– the Sierra Club, the National Wildlife Federation, Friends of the Earth, the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace –– are all old hat for this audience, so let me tell you about the new group that showed up in Seattle: the International Forum on Globalization. If any group is capable of short-circuiting the globalization of markets it will be the IFG, the brainchild of Jerry Mander, a 1960s adman who made himself famous shilling for public interest groups. Among his copy-writing triumphs, a series of Sierra Club advertisements that successfully opposed dam construction in the Grand Canyon. "Should we flood the Sistine Chapel so tourists can get nearer the ceiling?" he asked in each ad.
In April 1997, Mander presided over a three-day IFG-sponsored gathering at Berkeley, California. Titled "Globalization 101," it provided a forum for 40 activists, academics and left-wing policy framers who talked around a central theme. Through trade deregulation and new technologies, power was being rapidly concentrated in the hands of a few multinational corporations, destroying cultural and ecological diversity, and exacerbating inequities between rich and poor. You would not think such a rehash of 1960s activism would gain much traction in the materialistic dot.com 1990s but more than 2,000 students showed up at the Berkeley Community Theatre, drawn there by a shared belief that they weren’’t getting the truth about the New Economy from their professors. Put simply, something in all the high technology hype about one happily wired world wasn’’t adding up.
If today we are witnessing a market revolution fueled by the mercurial rise of dot-com startups engaged in business-to-business commerce, then what Mr. Mander has orchestrated in forming the IFG is a counterinsurgency, a new force prepared to campaign for political and regulatory control of light-speed technology.
Mander founded IFG in 1994, after passage of the North America Free Trade Agreement, and just before the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade created the World Trade Organization. He wanted to bring together activists who had campaigned unsuccessfully against these agreements in their own countries and intellectuals who were focused on developing anti-corporate critiques within specific sectors: agriculture, environment, poverty, democracy, labor and Third World debt. He reasoned that national and sector responses were no longer sufficient to counter the weight of technology-fueled globalization. The anti-corporate left needed to globalize too, and thanks to Mander, it now has. Today IFG links 60 organizations representing 25 countries. And while IFG claims no lobbying ties, its high profile associates represent the biggest and most influential environmental organizations.
If there is any irony in the emergence of IFG –– or the teach-in it conducted during the Seattle fiasco –– it lies in the fact that, while Mander deplores technology, his twenty-something disciples embrace it. They are Internet junkies and cell phone addicts who, during the Seattle riots, used these technologies to alert colleagues worldwide to unfolding events.
An article in the August issue of Forbes ASAP reveals much about the split between Mander and his followers over the merits of technology. Author Naomi Klein reports that while Mander doesn’’t deny that activism has been supercharged by the Internet, he also believes that the excitement of this new toy is missing a more significant political shift. "The Internet and other global communications systems have empowered multinational corporations, made them faster, stronger and more able to coordinate their actions internationally," Mander told Klein. "Now entire currencies can be destabilized at the push of a button. Sure, the Internet helps activists, but the question is: Who are these technologies helping more?" For Mr. Mander the answer is obvious. "In 10 years we are going to look back and recognize that the Internet is not decentralizing," he says. "It is the most centralizing technology ever invented."
Now here is why IFG and its followers will soon be marching in the streets for regulatory control over the Internet. Increasingly, they see e-commerce as a way to circumvent national laws, taxes and even trade regulating bodies like WTO. For many Mander followers, online, full-scale economic deregulation is fast becoming a reality. Thus, Mander predicts that "in six months’’ time there will be protests against Internet commerce itself." One wonders how urban folks who buy their Birkenstock’’s over the Internet from LL Bean will react to all of this. Even more wondrous, how will environmentalist and Internet inventor Al Gore react?
By now you are probably asking yourselves what Jerry Mander and the IFG have to do with logging or trade in lumber. A great deal I suspect. IFG and its environmentalist members were monumentally successful in Seattle, a fact that prompted the American Forest & Paper Association to express its "keen disappointment" that WTO adjourned without concluding an agreement on free trade in forest products under the Accelerated Trade Liberalization initiative. Statements like this make me wonder if anyone in our industry’’s cloistered towers is paying attention to what is happening in the real world. Sometimes I doubt it.
IFG is well on its way to becoming a legitimate organization –– and this fact is a tribute to its ability to rally forces around simple but powerful ideas that make disparate groups –– including anarchists –– feel as though they are standing on common ground. Mander has painted a picture of a brave new world where control over resources and decision making stays close to home and is not handed over to multinationals, corrupt national governments or the International Monetary Fund.
"Power should reside in the units closest to the ground," Mander declares. "What logger in this room this morning isn’’t comfortable with this idea? How often have we said to one another, "Decisions about managing this or that forest ought to be made here at home, not inside the Beltway and not by city-based environmentalist organizations?" Self-determination is a powerful and unifying force. It is freedom. We all want to be free.
What underlies the success of IFG –– indeed the success of anarchists on parade in Seattle - is not the failure of capitalism but its success. All those cell phone toting Internet junkies got to Seattle on someone’’s nickel, and odds are the nickels came from trust funds run by the feel-guilty heirs of the 19th century’’s industrialists: the oil monopolists, the steel magnates, the railroad empire builders and the timber barons.
So where does this leave us –– and where does it leave lumber trade? Well, I think it leaves us in the same place I left us in my presentation yesterday. As our friend Bruce Vincent has said so often, "The world is run by those who show up." Our industry hasn’’t shown up yet. Oh sure, we were in Seattle filled with hope, and yes we expressed disappointment that folks there didn’’t perceive the environmental advantages of a wood-based global economy, but where were we during the 25 years that environmentalists were kicking our butts up and down the block?
If we expect people –– especially youngsters filled with idealism –– to understand who we are and what we do we have to explain it to them, not just now and then when the spirit moves us, by every day, day in and day out. It’’s hard work. I know. I’’ve been at it every day –– including most Saturdays and Sundays –– for the last 15 years. And there are times when I think I must be nuts. I get tired and discouraged, and then I read about paradigm warriors like Jerry Mander and I say to myself, "We can do that! We can have that same kind of impact on how people think and on what they do and say." So why don’’t we? It’’s because first we have to show up. First we have to see that there is a lot more to the lumber trade than meets the eye.
Believe me there is a lot more to emerging anti- globalization than what you will see on the five o'clock news or read in your local newspaper. There are some big time forces on the loose out there that are going to play a big time role in shaping the course of market globalization, both politically and economically. Consider carefully these well-received words, spoken by Indian physicist Vandana Shiva at a recent IFG sponsored teach-in in Washington, D.C. "Biological diversity and local economies are being replaced with a global monoculture. The history of the World Bank has been to take power away from communities, give it to a central government, then give it to the corporations through privatization."
Biological diversity and local economic control: What an interesting joining of concepts that command-and-control environmentalists have long insisted cannot be married. This notion looks like pretty fertile ground to me, a chance for us to gain some traction in the global market place where ideas take shape, where the seeds of new wealth are planted daily in silicon forests and real forests all over the world.
One of forestry’’s great beauties –– perhaps its greatest beauty –– lies is the fact that it can be practiced on any scale anywhere trees grow by anyone committed to observing nature and applying science. And the benefits, my goodness: beautiful landscapes, an endless source of wood fiber, wildlife habitat, carbon storage, cleaner air, and someday –– a replacement for fossil fuels. Am I the only one who sees these environmental truths as a unifying force of enormous power and consequence? I sure hope not, and I sure hope we show up.