Greenpeace activists unfurl banner on San Fransisco tower to save Clayoquot.
Clayoquot Rainforest Coalition
During 1996 the international campaign to help save B.C.'s rainforests gained momentum. Its goal: to end consumption of disposable products made from ancient rainforests clearcut in B.C., especially Clayoquot Sound.
Leading the campaign is the U.S. Clayoquot Rainforest Coalition (CRC), headed by Greenpeace, Pacific Environment and Resources Center, Rainforest Action Network, and the Natural Resources Defense Council, which has Robert Kennedy Jr. on its legal staff.
CRC targeted Hollywood stars because of the large satellite film industry in B.C. It also targeted large paper consumers including Pacific Bell (PacBell), which buys phonebook-grade paper from MacMillan Bloedel (the major logging company in Clayoquot Sound), using it for throw-away yellow pages.
Besides encouraging celebrities like Oliver Stone to speak out, the CRC succeeded in getting an unexpectedly high 9 percent of PacBell's share-holders to support a resolution to stop using paper from clearcut rainforests.
The CRC also organized a number of California municipalities, including San Francisco, Berkeley and Santa Cruz, to unanimously pass resolutions opposing the use of clearcut rain-forest paper and urging business to move toward ecologically sound alternatives.
International pressure continues
Hollywood and our woods
by Oliver Stone, writer and director
First published in the Vancouver Sun, Wednesday June 26, 1996, page A13. Reprinted with
permission of The Vancouver Sun and Oliver Stone.
Hollywood's involvement in the campaign to save Canada's remaining rainforests shouldn't surprise British Columbians. Your forests are pretty much the best of what's left of the world's temperate rainforest ecosystem. You should be proud to be stewards of this magnificent treasure and you must surely know that the global outcry over its devastation will only intensify if it is not stopped. It is time to recognize that massacring the planet's forests has been one of the most shortsighted, arrogant and stupid projects of human civilization.
Our planet's once-magnificent cloak of natural forests has been almost entirely destroyed. Less than a quarter of it remains intact! It's not that B.C.'s forests are being singled out by environmentalists, it's that there's not much left to save! There is simply no excuse to clearcut what's left of the planet's rainforests. We know better. It is our generation that will knowingly decide whether the planet's rainforests die. We will never be forgiven if we let them fall, nor should we be.
After all, if an industrialized country like Canada cannot protect a jewel like Clayoquot Sound, what hope is there for the Amazon? Opening 88% of the Amazon basin to industrial exploitation would be cause for global outrage so how can the B.C. government feel good about publicizing a "goal" of protecting a mere 12 percent of its rainforests?
Here in the "lower 48", our natural forests are all but gone. We have scarred, clearcut hillsides, and we have impoverished tree farms--we have killed the soul of our land. Those ancient forests have been exterminated and will probably never be seen again. We clearcut them and turn them into pulp and two-by-fours. This is the road British Columbia is following, and that is why Americans have a special duty to stop your politicians and logging companies from repeating the same horrendous mistakes we made here.
For years our governments and timber companies fed us the same lines you are hearing now. In fact, many of the same P.R. companies that hid the logging companies' true agenda from us, are now employed by the MacMillan Bloedels and Forest Alliances of Canada.
Americans have other reasons to get involved besides trying to be decent neighbours. After all, borders are just lines on a map. All peoples of the world had a moral duty to fight apartheid in South Africa, and all peoples must fight to save the Amazon. If you think the clearcutting of British Columbia's rare temperate rainforests is less worthy of attention, you're selling yourself short.
Perhaps the most important reason for U.S. citizens to fight for Canada's rainforests is that we are complicit in their destruction. B.C.'s forests are being hacked into fields of stumps to feed American consumption. Pacific Bell and GTE, our phone companies, print their yellow pages on pulped B.C. rainforest every year. American houses are built with B.C. timber. Our over-consumption of wood and paper is driving the clearcutting of B.C.'s remaining old-growth.
North American companies are literally cannibalizing the planet to feed our voracious consumption. But, as consumers-, we have a right and a moral obligation to consider the effects of our purchases. We all refused to buy tuna that kills dolphins and we shouldn't be buying timber or paper that comes from the planet's remaining rainforests either.
Hollywood is constantly being courted to go to B.C. to film but governments have to realize that they can't have it both ways. In the modern world, you have to choose between attracting high tech industry or relying on nineteenth century models of resource exploitation. Isn't it hard to believe that it is almost the year 2000 but we still clearcut rainforests and turn them into products as crude as timber and phonebooks?
The logging companies and B.C. government keep saying things have changed in the woods. My office is inundated with hype about Forest Practices Codes and Protected Areas Strategies. But from what I can tell, these are trivial responses to a massive problem. Look at the bottom line; over 90% of the logging is still clearcutting, the rate of logging is the same or higher today than it was four years ago and in a best case scenario, a meagre 12 percent of B.C.'s rainforests will be protected.
I believe that most North Americans realize that we can't continue on our present course. Imagine if North Americans pulled together and decided that, while having wood is nice, it is not worth killing entire ecosystems. Imagine if we decided to reduce our consumption of wood and paper products. Imagine if we reduced it a lot, say by three-quarters or more. That would be a fundamental change in the way our society affects the Earth.
Critical places like the pristine areas of Clayoquot Sound and the rest of the temperate rainforests would no longer be under the threat of being chewed into pulp and lumber. The rate of logging could be slowed dramatically, old growth cutting could stop altogether.
Is it not time to realize that the world's remaining rainforests are too valuable to be clearcut? Governments can do far more to protect them. Logging companies can be forced to act according to conscience as well as profit.
I believe we all know what we are doing to the rainforests is a legacy from a time when we didn't know better. When future generations look back at us, will they see a people that stopped destroying rainforests only when there were none left to be destroyed, or a people that stopped destroying rainforests when they realized it was wrong?
WCWC Editorial Note: Stone's reference to the B.C. government's goal of protecting 12 percent of its rainforests is not correct. The B.C. government has committed to protecting 12 percent of B.C.'s land base. On Vancouver Island, meeting this goal has resulted in protection of less than 7 percent of the ancient rainforests.
