Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist (8 page)

Of course much of this mass extinction is attributed to global warming, or climate change as it is more generally referred to. It is hard to find a problem that isn’t linked to climate change these days. Again from Robert Kennedy Jr.:

Global warming could give us a future where erratic and chaotic weather, rising sea levels, and melting snowpack usher in an epic of drought, crop failure, famine, flood and mass extinctions-and the political instability that invariably accompanies dwindling resources. Millions of environmental refugees uprooted by these calamities will challenge the existence of democracy, freedom, justice and human dignity in every corner of the globe.
[6]

While Kennedy scales the heights of hyperbole, there are admittedly many reasonable people who believe human-caused global warming is a problem that needs to be addressed. Plenty of knowledgeable climatologists and scientists in related fields believe continued greenhouse gas emissions could pose a threat to climatic stability.

And there are, of course, knowledgeable and reasonable people who don’t believe humans are causing the planet to heat up and rather that we’re experiencing natural climate fluctuations. And there are people who believe even if we are causing global warming it may be beneficial, increasing growing seasons and reducing energy needs. The earth is actually relatively cool now compared to the many periods of warmer climate that occurred in the past.

So how do we, as a society, sort out the differing opinions, stances, and prescriptions to find a collective way forward when so many groups proclaim calamity at nearly every turn, while others proclaim no calamity at all?

First, we can look at the basic realities. Without accurate information on the current situation, it is hard to chart a sensible course for the future. This must be done scientifically, which means we must make decisions based on solid, credible information-not hype, dogma, or political agendas. Science is not a religion; it is the art of making accurate observations and interpretations of reality. From there we assess the various options and make pragmatic, sensible decisions.

We can all agree that humanity faces serious environmental challenges as we struggle to provide food, housing, clothing, transportation, and energy to the nearly seven billion people who call Earth their home. Currently, about two billion people, roughly one third of the total, have reasonably comfortable lifestyles.

But the challenge is growing. The world’s population is predicted to grow from 6.8 billion people in 2010 to 9.5 billion people sometime around the year 2050. Thankfully, population growth is already slowing, adding fewer people each year since 1997. Demographers expect the population will begin to decline slowly after we reach a peak of 9.5 billion. In addition to the sheer growth in numbers, in 2050 a larger percentage of the population (most, I hope) will be able to afford to be well fed, have access to medical care, own refrigerators, air conditioners, televisions, and will be able to afford to care about the environment more than they do today. This means instead of two billion people living modern lifestyles, there will be four to six billion, or two to three times more than today.

In a nutshell, this will double or perhaps triple the world’s demand for food, minerals, forest products, and energy. That is the crux of the environmental challenge we face today: how do we double or triple food and energy production without fouling our garden and without converting the entire planet into food and fuel factories? How can wild nature survive in such a future?

There is no shortage of answers to this challenge. Sticking to the topic of energy and climate change, we’re told to conserve energy, use more hydroelectric power, use more geothermal, use more wind, use more biofuels, use more solar, use tidal, use more nuclear, or simply increase fossil fuel consumption because man-made global warming is just a hoax anyway. All of these points of view may have a kernel of truth, but all are oversimplified prescriptions to very complex issues.

Today we face a wide divergence of opinions about whether or not the climate is warming, whether or not we are the primary culprit if it is warming, whether or not this will be good or bad, and what to do about it.

I do not deny that the climate has warmed; it has been doing so for more than 18,000 years—since the end of the last major glaciation, well before humans increased the concentration of CO
₂
in the atmosphere. And I do not deny that we are part of the cause of the recent rise in carbon dioxide levels in the global atmosphere, primarily because we burn huge quantities of fossil fuels. I don’t even deny we may be responsible for some of the present warming, but I do not believe we can be certain of this.

I know I’ve begun with some very large topics that require much more discussion. That will come later in the book. But for now my purpose is to demonstrate, by way of the climate change/energy issue, the divergence of opinion that forced me to make my own way in the environmental debate. I couldn’t belong to an organization, or a movement, that demanded strict adherence to policies I thought deserved more debate, especially when there were logically inconsistent and contradictory positions taken on related issues. When environmentalism becomes an ideology or a religion, I’m out the door because I believe in continued open discussion of complex scientific issues about the future of civilization and the global environment. Simplistic, zero-tolerance, black-and-white positions are the enemy of sensible environmentalism. I believe in a more reasonable approach that provides practical solutions to real problems.

No doubt some of you are already groaning, while I hope others are cheering. My primary purpose is to stimulate thought and debate about some of the more interesting and important issues of our time. Of course for now my mind is made up about some of them, but I’d like to think I am open to new information and fresh arguments. That’s all I ask of the reader, to bear with me through the story of my 40 years as an ecologist and environmental activist. During those years I’ve developed a vision for environmentalism in the 21st century. Allow me to share that vision with you.

[1]
. Robert Kennedy Jr., Facebook, April 27, 2005, http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2204512237

[2]
. Editorial, “Kennedy Picks the Wrong Side,”
New Bedford Standard-Times
, August 21, 2005, http://archive.southcoasttoday.com/daily/08-05/08-21-05/kennedy.htm

[3]
. BBC News, “Greenpeace Opposes Wind Farm Plan,” April 6, 2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/4415787.stm

[4]
. Michael Crichton, “Remarks to the Commonwealth Club,” San Francisco, September 15, 2003, http://www.monsanto.co.uk/news/ukshowlib.phtml?uid=7662

[5]
. “The Current Mass Extinction,” http://www.well.com/~davidu/extinction.html

[6]
. Robert Kennedy Jr., April 27, 2005, http://climatequotes.com/celebrities/robert-f-kennedy-jr/

Chapter 3 -
Beginnings

My life began in the tiny fishing and logging village of Winter Harbour on the northwest tip of Vancouver Island, in the rain forest by the Pacific. My mother and father were the children of true pioneers, who had come to this remote place and learned to make a living from a tough wilderness. I grew up thinking 150 inches of rain a year was normal and that the ultimate freedom was a 12-foot wooden skiff with a two-horsepower outboard motor. There was no road to—or even in—Winter Harbour. I commuted with a few other children on my dad’s small wooden tugboat to a one-room schoolhouse two miles away. It was a peaceful childhood, playing on the tide flats by the salmon-spawning streams in the rain forest.

The original Kwakiutl inhabitants of Winter Harbour called their village Cliena. They had survived by the beach for thousands of years on the abundant salmon, clams, and berries, and built their houses of cedar planks taken from the forest behind them. Over the years the people of Cliena were decimated by measles, smallpox, and other diseases introduced by early European settlers. (Many other aboriginal communities met a similar fate.) The village site had long been abandoned by the time my grandfather established his float camp in Winter Harbour in 1936, the few native survivors having relocated to the nearby community of Quatsino. I was born into this far-flung floating village on June 15, 1947.

The floating logging camp I was born into in Winter Harbour had about 50 residents. The family houses are on the right and the single men’s cabins are on the left. This photo was taken in 1951.

The logging camp where I grew up was on floats made of old-growth trees cut along the shoreline. There were a dozen bunkhouses for the single men, a cookhouse, blacksmith shop, office, movie hall, and a half-dozen family houses. The fishing was best behind the cookhouse, where the flunky (the cook’s assistant) threw the food scraps into the ocean (the “salt chuck” to us). Mothers worried their children would fall into the salt chuck and drown. A bulky kapok life jacket was mandatory dress outside the house. My first brush with death came at age four when I fell between two float-logs and became stuck facedown in the water between them. Luckily one of the loggers found me before I drowned.

There were no frills in the life of a West Coast logger in those early years. Four men bunked in each 12-by-24-foot shack, one to a corner, with a 45-gallon oil drum woodstove in the center, where rain soaked clothes were hung to dry. They worked six or seven days a week, getting up in the dark, working in the rain and wrestling in the mud to fix broken machinery. It was hard, relentless work, falling the huge trees, winching them down the mountain to the sea, where they could be boomed to the mill, all the while staying alert to avoid being slashed by a snapping cable or crushed by a runaway log. When the loggers were not working, there was nothing much to do back at the bunkhouse but play cards or listen to the radio. It was a lonely and sometimes miserable existence.

The float camp was moved ashore in 1954. This white house by the large spruce tree was my home until I was 14.

The early float camp era was ending during my boyhood. As the merchantable trees along the water’s edge had all been harvested, myfather, Bill Moore, obtained a lease in 1954 from the Kwakiutl to establish a permanent community on the original native village site. Roads were built to access timber farther up the valleys. Diesel-powered engines had replaced steam engines some years before, but it was the introduction of the motorized chainsaw, which replaced double-bitted axes and crosscut handsaws, that revolutionized logging. Productivity increased dramatically with this improvement in technology. Loggers and their families shared in the postwar boom in material culture and working-class affluence. It was a wonderful time to live in the rain forest.

I didn’t know I lived in a rain forest; to us it was simply “the woods” and it rained a lot. When it rained for 30 days straight, we began to miss the sun. My playground and backyard was a recent clearcut across the road from our house. We didn’t call it a clearcut because the word wasn’t known; it was simply an opening or the “slash.” The slash was a better place to play than the deep dark of the old-growth forest surrounding us. It was brighter and when the sun shone it was warmer and drier. The only other places where the sun came out were down on the dock and on the tide flats. In the clearing you could sit on a stump in the sun and all summer long the berries grew: first the salmonberries, then thimbleberries, then huckleberries, and finally the salal berries. They were all deliciously different and we shared them with birds, deer, and bears. As time went on, new trees came up and added year-round green to the logged area. The hemlocks, cedars, and firs that competed for sunlight eventually crowded out the berry bushes. It was time to move on and to play in a more recent clearcut. From this experience I developed a very different impression of logging than one might gain from the popular press today.