letters
TO THE EDITOR
CALCUTTA IN EUGENE
Millions of Americans, in the richest
country in the history of the world, are left
out with no income. The only safety net is
a small food voucher; the monthly worth
is about what the “middle class” eats in a
week.
In historic Calcutta, the “untouchables”
were allowed to build slum shanty
communities with scrap materials. Here
in Oregon, we do have “food stamps,” an
ATM card for limited food only, from the
federal government. That is Oregon’s safety
net.
For Oregon’s unemployed and disabled
persons not yet certifi ed by years of federal
investigations, our untouchables are called
homeless persons. Many are seen as
beggars, but the police remove them from
the urban areas. Where can our homeless
people go? They are ignored, abandoned
or arrested for criminal trespass or “illegal
camping.”
Federal and state governments have
the unfulfi lled responsibility for the
welfare of homeless persons. What can
local governments do with very limited
revenues? Local governments can allow
homeless persons a legal, safe place to camp
and build shelters. Eugene and Lane County
now have no such legal safe place for our
untouchable homeless persons to exist.
Local charities, nonprofi t organizations
and generous citizens meet as much of the
needs of the homeless population as they
can, but they are unable to shelter all those
in need.
We need a legal safe place for homeless
persons to try to help themselves with
support of volunteers from the community.
Jerry Smith
Eugene
GIFT TO TIMBER BARONS
It is a clear-cut decision in more ways
than one to support Rob Handy and Pete
Sorenson. Putting more of our forests in
the hands of the timber barons to clear cut
and burn in Seneca’s polluting biomass
plant or send overseas as whole logs is not
what I want to happen to our beautiful Lane
County forests.
I’m also very disappointed in Andy
Stahl’s thoughts on countywide elections
that reduce the power of neighborhoods
and up the power of large timber owners
and their wealthy friends. By this time
everyone should have concluded that the
lawsuit against Rob and Pete was politically
motivated to give (the plaintiffs) more of our
forest to misuse. The ruling was wrong. We
need to recognize the years of service to our
community and re-elect Pete and Rob.
Ruth Duemler
Eugene
HATCHET JOB
Lane County voters have a choice
between tacitly endorsing dirty, right-wing
tricks or re-electing Commissioners Rob
Handy and Pete Sorenson.
I suppose that nearly every citizen of
Eugene knows about the Aaron Jones-
funded lawsuit accusing Sorenson and
Handy of violating the open meetings
laws. If you are not convinced that this
suit was a right-wing hatchet job that has
been repudiated by every respected legal
authority, you can fi nd a good summary of
the case in a Register-Guard editorial by
Robert Roth that appeared March 25.
That resource extractors and developers
found it necessary to orchestrate the
persecution of Handy and Sorenson is proof
positive that they are doing the job we
elected them to do — standing up for the
interests of the many, not the few.
Voters have an easy choice. We can vote
for Pete and Rob, who have stood by their
progressive principles, or demonstrate that
dirty politics work by voting for their go-
along, get-along opponents.
Paul Nicholson
Eugene
CALIFORNIA BASHIN’
When I told my family I was moving
here, they said: “Don’t tell them you’re
from California!” I got a list of grievances
— bad service after being ID’d, smashed
windshields and fi ngers for California
plates, etc. But my experience has been
nothing but good.
Seems I was wrong to defend Oregon.
Every week this newspaper informs, amuses
and disturbs me. I like EW for wearing its
heart on its sleeve. But imagine my surprise
to read on March 15th in Slant: “So what’s
driving expansion locally? A lot of pressure
from land speculators and developers, and
an ill-informed, California-style attitude that
growth is not only inevitable, but necessary
for our economic growth.” Never thought
I’d see state-ism in the Weekly.
I was further stunned not to see an
apology or letter the next week. Should
I assume all your readers are OK with
this? I have no strong opinions about
Envision Eugene. The state requirement to
periodically evaluate city land is enviable.
I worry about poor development practices,
too. But put blame where it belongs: greed
or developers, maybe deaf city offi cials.
Just don’t blame my home state.
Californians aren’t sprawl-loving fi ends.
We battle developers, too. One reason I love
my hometown is its location close to the
forest, beach, desert and downtown. Don’t
forget California is where the Sierra Club
was founded, hopeful home to our nation’s
fi rst real high-speed rail line and has long led
the country in emissions restrictions. More
land is set aside in California for National
Forests than in Oregon, not including other
land preserves. With all due respect, you’re
not perfect either. Your own article’s proof.
So, EW, you owe Californians an apology.
Please refrain from promoting bigotry of
any kind. It doesn’t look good on you.
Ian Korn
Eugene
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to timely local issues. Please limit length to 200 words,
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Lincoln, Eugene 97401.
DESIGNMATTERS
BY JERRY DIETHELM
An Epic Clash
Conservation ethics underlie timber fight
I
suppose it makes a kind of desperate sense to think
about stepping up logging again on the BLM’s O&C
lands. In a time of fi nancial crisis in Oregon’s timber
dependent counties and with revenue from the last of the
federal payment acts about run out, why not try to restore
the revenue fl ows they once knew with renewed cutting in
the federal forests?
There is a clear-cut irony here. In a “Great Recession”
brought on by the deregulation of the fi nancial industry, is
the obvious answer the deregulation of logging in our public
forests?
One would think that excessive and radical deregulation
in the name of liberty and free markets over the past
three decades would have caused enough harm. Can you
say Enron? Credit default swaps? But when people are
desperate, when they themselves become the endangered
species, they have historically accepted such “out-of-the-
box” extreme measures as the internment of Japanese
Americans, the more recent terror-driven erosion of our
Fourth Amendment rights, and are presently considering
the Stahl-DeFazio “timber trust” return to the over-cutting
practices of the 1970s and ’80s.
This belief that a return to that golden age of logging
will solve the counties’ fi nancial problems is easy to
understand and sympathize with, but it is mistaken, illegal
and unwise. And, more fundamentally, it misses the evolved
understanding of conservation that has captured thoughtful
minds.
Present forest law was born in the turn-of-the century
Utilitarian conservation ethic of wise use. Until the 1970s, this
took the form of the Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act, a good
law and guide, but one that utterly failed to rein in intensive
industrial and political pressure on the public forest.
6
APRIL 12, 2012
EUGENE WEEKLY
And then, during the 1970s
Nixon
administration,
Congress
passed two important new laws, the
National Environmental Policy Act
(NEPA) and the Endangered Species
Act (ESA), which President Nixon
signed, and the “NW forest wars” began.
The upshot has been that old practices and
environmentally defi cient plans have with
frustrating frequency ended up in court. It has
taken these stronger laws to be able to stand up against
the economic pressures (and many corruptions) that can
and often do subvert wise use.
But even under the new laws, it hasn’t been easy. In
the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan, “the U.S. Forest Service and
Bureau of Land Management (fi nally) admitted that they
had been signifi cantly over-cutting the federal forests and
not giving enough weight to wildlife, fi sh and water quality
concerns.”
What we have been witnessing for the past quarter
century or more is an epic clash of ethics regarding
conservation.
In the 1960s, our traditional ethics (systems of conduct)
and morality (the good choices we make) jumped out of their
old human-centered box. It became clear that “the greatest
good for the greatest number” of utilitarian concern
needed to include more than just people. And likewise, that
a humanistic ethic of duty, rights and justice needed to be
expanded to include our duties and responsibilities to the
natural environment we live in, which had rights of its own.
Remarkably, the environmental laws of the 1970s, NEPA
and ESA, fully embraced and encoded this new conservation
ethic. It was the beginning of the end for those invested in
the ideas, plant, equipment and forest practices
of the past. Today, of course, we honor
the Rachel Carsons, Aldo Leopolds and
Albert Schweitzers whose inspirational
ecological awareness started the country
on this path. The real radicals now are
those who remain stuck in an ethical
past unable to face the fact that newer
ecological conservation, with its wider
duties and responsibilities, has fi rmly
taken hold and is not going away.
That’s what makes the proposed
S t a h l - D e Fa z i o - W a l d e n - S c h r a d e r
timber trust proposal such a retrograde
misconception and tragic mistake. Their
proposed law would try to hide the public forests
in a state trust impervious to the nuisance of federal
environmental regulations, like NEPA and ESA, and from all
of us who believe that it is time to become better and more
responsible citizens — not just users — of our federal forests.
Leasing these lands out to an industrial forestry overseen
by an appointed state timber trust board, and then having
them managed as short-rotation tree farms under the
Oregon Forest Practices Act, would send us back to darker
forest days.
Unfortunately, the north and south Eugene county
commissioners races are also caught up in this confl ict.
Two committed conservationists, Commissioners Sorenson
and Handy, stand in the way of this timber trust strategy
to increase logging in Lane County, most of which would
occur on lands presently designated in the Northwest Forest
Plan for forest restoration. What better explains the timber
industry-funded slap suit and smear campaign underway to
try to unseat them?
Yes, the times are tough and the counties are
desperate for more revenue, but jumping on an old logging
train running on worn out ethical tracks just won’t cut it.
Jerry Diethelm is a Eugene architect, landscape architect and
planning and urban design consultant.
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