🚀 go-pugleaf

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Retransmit Freely in Cyberspace | Author Holds Standard Copyright 
 
            Originally published in The Nanaimo Times
                    November 8, 1994, page A5
 
               Author: Kim Goldberg (kimg@efn.org)
 
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                           HAVING BOTH
            Oregon is booming, thanks to spotted owl, 
          but B.C.'s biggest newspaper turns a blind eye 
 
                      (c) Kim Goldberg, 1994
 
    The most significant land use decisions in British Columbia 
(decisions euphemistically termed "compromises" despite the fact 
that the only thing compromised is ecological integrity and 
sustainability) have all been justified with the jobs-versus-
trees argument.  As though we can't have both.  As though we must 
choose between economic stability and irreplaceable old growth 
forests.  
    The jobs-versus-trees argument has been bogus from the 
outset, manufactured by timber companies and their high-priced 
spin doctors, and preying on the fears of working people in 
resource-dependent towns.  
    Unfortunately for the companies, their favorite myth was 
detonated last month in a front page story in the New York 
Times describing Oregon's economic boom three years after U.S.  
courts drastically curtailed old growth logging to protect the 
northern spotted owl.  
    "Economic calamity has never looked so good," the Oct. 11 
article states.
    The logging industry predicted 100,000 Oregon jobs would 
be sacrificied to the spotted owl ruling.  In fact, the state 
has added 100,000 jobs to its growing economy in the last year 
alone, and the state may soon face a labor shortage.  
    Still the top timber-producing state in the U.S., Oregon 
posted its lowest unemployement rate in a generation this 
year - a mere 5 percent.  
    Timber workers are being retrained, and while the number 
of logging jobs has fallen, the average wage in Oregon has 
risen.  
    Ninety percent of retrained woodworkers are finding work 
immediately, and at an average wage of just $1 an hour less 
than the average timber industry job.  
    Even more importantly, these retrained workers say "the 
world has opened up" to them through their new careers.  
    "I was brain-dead at the mill," says one man, who 
retrained for community service work.  
    Even the most timber-dependent towns in southern Oregon 
report rising property values and a net increase in jobs, the 
NY Times article states.
    If you missed these stunning revelations, you're not 
alone.  
    The Vancouver Sun, B.C.'s largest and most influential 
news outlet, did its darndest to prevent British Columbians 
from learning the truth.
    The Sun, you may recall, is that bastion of crusading 
journalism that cut its environment-related beats from five to 
one, axed David Suzuki's column, spent much of 1991 and 1992 
genuflecting at the feet of timber barons, and yanked the 
forestry reporter off his beat when he exposed the 
unflattering history of the timber industry's P.R. firm, 
Burson Marsteller.  
    So how did the Sun deal with the startling news that there 
is indeed life, in fact economic vigor, after environmental 
protection?  
    Did they give it 34 inches and two graphics starting on 
page one as the NY Times had?  Did they assign their own 
reporter to examine the parallels between B.C. and Oregon?  
Did they launch a series investigating the accuracy and real 
agenda behind the jobs-versus-trees mantra chanted incessantly 
by industry and government?  
    No.  The Sun pulled the NY Times story off the wire, 
hacked it down to ten inches, buried it mid-way down page A17 
and skipped the graphics to make it as visually insignificant 
as possible.  
    As Salman Rushdie wrote in his novel, Shame: "There are 
things that cannot be said.  No, it's more than that; there 
are things that cannot be permitted to be true." 
    Thanks, Sun, for continuing to bring us all the news that 
fits.  
                            - 30 -
 
    Kim Goldberg is a Nanaimo Times columnist.