What are Conservatives conserving?

An editorial by New York Times columnist John Tierney, published 4/25/06 in Santa Rosa's Press Democrat is as ingenuous a piece of work as I have seen in quite a while. Entitled "Cheer up, Earth Day is over," it not only embodies what is wrong with this nation and its forgetful population, but also perpetuates serious error in its misguided point of view.

A quote from the third paragraph reads, "Most air pollutants have declined sharply in recent decades, and the amount of forest lands hasn't been shrinking at all--it's been fairly stable since 1920 and has actually grown in the last decade." As to the air pollution, I will not venture to say that it has increased, though I can scarcely say how that was accomplished.

However, to say that the amount of forest land in the U.S. has remained stable since 1920 is utter nonsense. In the early 80's I worked in the the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, and I can offer photographic proof of this lie, as well as point out that in 1983 one hundred million board feet of timber was taken out of this national forest. In addition, since the 1970's the amount of replanting done to restore a huge amount of clear-cut areas has resulted in little more than a token effort. Not only is Tierney incorrect in his conclusions, but his wrongheaded attitude spreads a feel-good myth in the vain hope of countering the reasonable assumption that we simply do not practice conservation.

Lastly, his assertion that the U.S. "dropped out" from participating in the Kyoto Protocols was that it "couldn't get proper credit for the new growth in its forests," is a misleading and naive viewpoint. Don't forget our president's assertion that there is no global warming, his inability to reconcile reasonable environmental goals with the corporations that fund his administration, and the simple fact that less than 25% of all timber taken out of forests in the last 30 years has been replanted. Not much to credit, but it was a plausible (barely) excuse for the U.S. to pull out of a conference that it did not support.