Quantum Forest

Environmental discussion in Tasmania is plagued with false dilemmas. As I described before in Conservation or production: a false dilemma, the reduction of environmental issues to ‘two unpleasant mutually exclusive propositions’ shows either dishonesty or lack of imagination (maybe both). In that case, I pointed out that the false dilemma was being presented by environmentalists.

This time around the false dilemma comes from the pro-forestry camp. It is now phrased as ‘pulp mill or woodchips’. Considering the diversity of forests and of their management in Tasmania (species, ages, silviculture, etc), it is conceivable to feed a range of industrial processes (e.g., pulp mills, sawmills, veneer mills, energy production, etc) to obtain, again, a range of products. However, the discussion is presented as we either build a large pulp mill or keep transforming part of the forests into woodchips. Either you support a pulp mill or you support woodchipping; bollocks!

There are, of course, many possible alternative scenarios: large pulp mill, no pulp mill, small pulp mill and other mills, etc. When searching for optimal solutions for Tasmania there is no point on discarding options a priori just because they do not boil down to a simple message or slogan.

I know. I may expect too much from politicians…