Soapbox Speech, page 27

I know the arguments they make against environmentalist: people and jobs are more important than owls and trees. But that's just too damn simplistic.

There aren't that many old-growth trees left and the loggers’ way of life as they've known it for the last century or so is ending -- just like my grandfather's life as a blacksmith ended. He didn't blabber hatred towards cars and trains, or the people who built them. He recognized that blacksmithing had become a thing of the past and retrained himself to make a living.

Loggers are going to have to do the same – if not now, later. And it's not as ‘later’ as they would like to believe.  When they cut all that's to be cut and the big companies they work for – Boise Cascade, Weyerhauser and all the rest – pull up stakes and move their operation to the Amazon basin or some other area they can exploit, the loggers will be left with nothing. And their children will be left with nothing. 

Like I say, it's going to happen sooner or later. Like any other species, people have to adapt to survive. Maybe my attitude would be different if I had been raised in a forest -dependent family, but I doubt it. Where are most of these logs going, anyhow? To be milled in Japan, that's where! Forest people should stick together, cut fewer trees and demand they be milled here.

It's not MY fault that lumber companies thoughtlessly ignored reforestation and greedily devour the next parcel of poor service plan, then the next, and the next, and the next. I have no problem with them cutting trees they planted for that purpose, but they didn't think ahead 30-years ago and plant trees they could harvest now. Now they want to cut my trees.

If I finish a six pack of beer and still feel thirsty, I don't go into my neighbor's refrigerator and help myself because I’ve got none left and he ought to share his!

I read somewhere that 92% of the forest present in this country when Columbus arrived is now gone. That leaves 8% of the original treasure for the rest of us to protect. Are chopsticks more important than that?

Sometimes, when I see the logger families on TV protesting down at the state capital, I wonder how many of them own foreign cars and trucks. Did they think about what they were doing to the American auto worker in Detroit when they bought their Toyota 4x4?

I suppose you can tell that I've finished my book and have nothing else to read ... nothing else to do but write in my journal. I tend to ramble sometimes and occasionally drag the soapbox along for good measure. I'll put it away now.

– Keep reading.