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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, JUNE 26, 2018
editor@dailyastorian.com
KARI BORGEN
Publisher
JIM VAN NOSTRAND
Editor
Founded in 1873
JEREMY FELDMAN
Circulation Manager
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Business Manager
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Production Manager
CARL EARL
Systems Manager
GUEST COLUMN
Working forests help fight climate change
I
’m lucky to be able to spend most days
in the woods, helping to look after the
sustainability and health of 33,000 acres of
Hampton Lumber’s forestland here in Clatsop
County.
As a family-owned wood products com-
pany, our outlook is inherently multi-genera-
tional. Our foresters plant trees they have no
expectation of seeing harvested before they
are retired. The Hampton family is committed
to ensuring the next generation inherits a
business that is healthy and sustainable, both
economically and ecologically.
The work we do every day is focused on
ensuring our forests are as
healthy in 50 years as they
are today. We recognize how
climate change could affect
forest and community health.
I hope it is under-
standable, then, just how
JED
frustrating it is for those of
ARNOLD
us in Oregon’s forest sector
to see a new line of attack by
groups opposed to commercial forestry: the
claim that forestry operations are the primary
source of carbon emissions in the state. There
are some eye-popping numbers being put
forward by groups whose main goal appears
to be to reduce or eliminate timber harvests in
our state. However, closer examination of the
source material for these claims reveals they
are less scientific analysis and more creative
interpretations of carbon accounting and policy
language.
Like so much of the science relating to cli-
mate change and its effects, proper forest car-
bon accounting is complex and the subject of
ongoing research and debate. It is worth not-
ing, however, that the UN’s International Panel
on Climate Change specifically identified sus-
tainable forest management for “timber, fibre
or energy” as a key tool in mitigating carbon
emissions. In fact, several Northern European
nations — often seen as leaders in the green
movement by environmentalists in the U.S. —
are actually increasing the actively managed
forests in their countries as a component of
their strategy to combat climate change.
Sustainable timber harvest as a strategy to
fight climate change makes a lot of sense when
one looks at modern forest management and
Hampton Family Forests
A Hampton logging operation in Clatsop County.
‘It should be the responsibility of all
Oregonians ... to make the necessary changes in
our lifestyle to reduce our carbon emissions.’
timber production in the proper context —
through a long-term life cycle analysis. A good
portion of a tree’s carbon remains stored in the
wood products that are created from it, locking
that carbon away for the life of the product,
while atmospheric carbon is taken up by the
tree planted in its place. This is particularly
important when those products are lumber
used in housing and other construction. It’s
also worth noting that every building material,
piece of furniture and even kitchen utensil
made from wood means one less product made
from iron, aluminum, concrete or plastic, all
of which emit significantly more greenhouse
gases during their production.
While it does take some years for a newly
planted tree to reach the carbon capture poten-
tial of a mature one, trees grow faster here on
the North Coast than almost anywhere else in
the world and that difference is quickly made
up for. When consideration is given to carbon
uptake over the entire lifespan of the tree and
the life cycle of wood products, Oregon’s
working forests are shown to be a net carbon
sink. Said another way, commercial forests
in Oregon are already absorbing and locking
away more carbon than is emitted to manage
them.
Carbon release through deforestation
is a very real threat — just not in Oregon.
Deforestation is defined as the conversion of
forestland to a non-forest use (e.g. agriculture
or development). There is virtually no defor-
estation taking place in the state and what little
is occurring is due to conversion of forestland
into housing. In fact, the Oregon Department
of Forestry estimates that 92 percent of the
land that was forested in 1850 remains forested
today.
A good portion of forest loss outside of
the U.S. is due to logging to meet the world’s
ever-growing appetite for agricultural and
wood products. If one is truly concerned about
climate change, it is important to remember we
live in a global economy and every tree we do
not cut here, in a place with strict environmen-
tal protections and replanting laws, is a tree
that will be cut somewhere else in the world,
likely from a forest that will be lost — along
with its carbon storage capacity — for many
lifetimes.
There is something deeply cynical about
proposals that suggest Oregon could meet the
majority of its goals for net carbon output by
halting harvests in our forests. It should be the
responsibility of all Oregonians, indeed all res-
idents of more developed countries, to make
the necessary changes in our lifestyle to reduce
our carbon emissions. To demand that the res-
idents of rural counties sacrifice their way of
life and renewable natural resources economy
— our rare comparative advantage — so that
urban residents can continue their consump-
tion without further inconvenience strikes me
as unfair. Further, to suggest that the handful of
jobs created through forest restoration projects
would come anywhere close to replacing the
thousands of high-skill, living-wage forest and
sawmill jobs that would be lost in a coastal
carbon storage scheme reveals a lack of under-
standing about the modern forest economy in
our county.
These forests are our livelihoods, our
schools, our public services, and our privilege
and responsibility to sustain for a variety of
uses and benefits. Reducing the amount of
timber we sustainably harvest in Oregon will
do more to harm efforts to reach a global
reduction in CO2 levels than help them. But
even if we choose to ignore this and focus on
Oregon’s carbon reduction goals as though
we were in a bubble, why would we ask rural
Oregonians to give up more working-class
jobs and more school funding dollars when our
working forests are already part of the solution
to climate change?
I invite you to learn more about working
forests and talk to those who make their living
in the renewable wood products sector. There
are a lot of us here on the North Coast. Rural
or urban, we’re all in this together. Let’s work
together so our forests can continue to sustain-
ably provide for a multitude of benefits.
Jed Arnold is community outreach and stew-
ardship coordinator for Hampton Family For-
ests on the North Coast.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
This is not greatness
O
ne terrifying moment scarred me far
more than the many others in my abu-
sive childhood. My giant of a stepfather had
shoved my mother out the door, causing her to
hit her head on a concrete step. When he car-
ried her back in the house, her arms flailed,
her eyes rolled in her head, and she babbled
incoherently.
All the beatings, all the whippings, all the
times I endured a raging man hurl insults and
profanities at me (a small child) and cringed
in his presence were nothing compared to that
moment — when I thought my mother was
going to die, when I thought I’d lost her.
Now U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement agents are causing similar harm
to some children; taking them from their
island of love and security, their whole world.
How many of them will have post-traumatic
stress disorder from such a malicious act? For
how many will it be years, or decades, before
their minds know any real peace again, or per-
haps never to recover?
This is not greatness. Greatness would
shove the giants down, badged or not, and
protect children and families from harm.
Make America great again.
MICHAEL A. “SASHA” MILLER
Astoria
Johnson out of touch
with constituents
I
am writing to take issue with The Daily
Astorian’s description of Betsy Johnson as
a “moderate Democrat” in the June 21 article,
“Johnson, Witt dinged by fellow Democrats.”
Betsy Johnson is not a Democrat, let alone
a moderate one. She consistently votes against
Democratic positions on guns, unions and the
environment, to name a few. The fact that she
“was dumbstruck that anybody cares” that she
supported Republican Dennis Richardson for
Secretary of State proves she is out of touch
with a large portion of her constituents.
She does not represent me, and should
consider resigning from the Democratic party.
JOANN WILTRAKIS
Astoria
Cruelty should not be policy
I
’m grateful that journalists are revealing
the damage inflicted by the Trump admin-
istration’s inhumane immigration policy. The
U.S. government has forcibly separated about
3,000 children — even babies and toddlers —
from their parents, who are legally and peace-
fully seeking asylum from danger and threats
of death in their home countries.
These children were placed in child intern-
ment camps and are being treated like crimi-
nals. Worse, government recordkeeping is so
careless that nonprofit groups struggle to iden-
tify which children belong to which adults.
President Donald Trump’s family separa-
tion actions have created thousands of future
enemies of our country. These are the peo-
ple fleeing danger in their own countries, who
believe in the American dream, and who are
now being brutalized by the very country they
thought would provide safe harbor.
The short-term consequences are appall-
ing for these children, their families and our
economy. The long-term consequences will
be disastrous. We, as a country, will be paying
for this sin for generations.
Many, if not most, Republican voters
approve of ripping apart immigrant families
and traumatizing their children. They are will-
ing to ignore the rule of law, forget due pro-
cess and reject compassion and kindness. This
leads me to think they’re far more of a danger
to the U.S. than the immigrants on our south-
ern border.
It’s up to each of us to demand an end
to cruelty as public policy. We must defend
democracy and human decency.
LAURIE CAPLAN
Astoria
Donald Trump and the truth
L
et’s face it, some of us have been delu-
sional for too long. With the advent of
President Donald Trump on the political
scene, many of us were disabused of previous
notions of truth.
Mr. Trump tried gallantly to save the U.S.
from a person who wasn’t even eligible to
become our president, but the Democrats on
the Supreme Court denied the truth.
The Mueller investigation is a grandstand-
ing hoax, because our president has told us
repeatedly that it is nothing but lies manufac-
tured by the Democrats.
The current debate excoriates those who
favor removing children from parents who
enter the U.S. illegally. Obstructionists liken
Trump’s “zero tolerance” to the internment
of the Japanese, and Hitler’s concentration
camps. But they are as wrong as the Demo-
crats who created that policy in the first place.
According to the Washington Post, Trump
told lies more than 3,000 times in the last 466
days. It is not impossible that our president
will reveal soon that it was he who commis-
sioned Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
ERHARD GROSS
Astoria
Move little kids out of
tsunami zone first
I
n regard to the article “Warrenton schools
eye several master campus sites” (The
Daily Astorian, June 15), I totally agree we
need to move our schools out of the tsu-
nami zone. What I do not understand at all,
is why would we move the most vulnerable
age last.
The article mentions the decision to float
a bond in November to buy a master campus
and build a middle school, a bond in 2022
to move the high school, and finally a bond
in 2032 to move the elementary school. Do
we need to rethink this, and move the little
kids first?
In their tsunami drills, the
elementary school walks little kids as
young as 3 west on Ninth Street, toward
the ocean, to the rise on Juniper Street.
I have no idea what the high school does,
but they do have access to all those cars
in the parking lot, and kids old enough to
drive.
Let’s move the little, most vulnerable,
ones first, please.
ALICE CHALOUX
Warrenton