Quantum Forest

I got you! This post is not about the end of forestry activity in Tasmania, but about the end of the Forestry in Tasmania web pages. After two years compiling materials and hand formatting HTML I have decided to stop updating the sub domain. The fact that I am leaving Tasmania at the end of the year—so I will not have time to keep up to date with what is going on—is just the straw that broke… you know.

I still need to decide what to do with the site; either I will leave it unchanged for posterity’s sake or pull the plug and delete the whole thing. Over these last two years I have received a fair amount of abuse and a few examples of praise for keeping the site and trying to present a ‘fair view’ of environmental discussion in Tasmania. However, whatever tries to pass as debate is so low quality that it is easy to get disheartened with what one reads in the media.

Will I start a ‘forestry in New Zealand’ page? I doubt it; my role will be completely different and forestry activity over there is much less contentious. I rather spend some time learning Maori—I am quite keen about this—and practicing the haka with Orlando.

After our 1998 expedition to India, we gained a bit more appreciation of Indian food. Hobart has four or five Indian restaurants, with Annapurna being probably the best one. Anyway, we have not had Indian food for a while and we decided to order this time from that Tandoor and Curry House (101 Harrington Street, Hobart). The food used to be very good and this time we ordered simple and mild dishes: Lamb Korma and Palaak Paneer. However, it seems that they have changed chef or something like that; the food was pretty ordinary, the Palaak Paneer quite spicy and we both got heartburn. Not recommended anymore.

And the movies

Last weekend was—as any weekend—horrible on terms of TV programs, so after putting Orlando in bed we just started watching our copy of the twentieth anniversary edition of E.T. the extraterrestrial Twenty three year later the movie is still magical for me and, embarrasingly, I still get emotional when E.T. say goodbye.

On Sunday I decided to watch The girl in the café, which was broadcasted by ABC. The previews of the movie promised something a bit different and funny: it starts with a socially disfunctional public servant (Bill Nighy—for some obscure reason I have a weak spot for him) meeting a mysterious low-key girl (Kelly Macdonald) in a café, with the background of G8 summit negotiations. Unfortunately, as time passes the movie becomes a propaganda medium and very incredible. The movie promised much more than it delivered.

This reminded me of some (relatively recent) movies that I had really enjoyed, in no particular order:

• American splendor: a mix of fiction and reality portraiting the life of comic book author Harvey Pekar. Paul Giamatti does a superb job as Harvey. Movie web site, Rotten tomatoes reviews and Amazon link.
• Sideways (link to IMDB): another movie with Paul Giamatti, this time working with Thomas Haden Church. A drama with comedy overtones, or a comedy with drama touches. Movie web site, Rotten tomatoes reviews and Amazon link
• Being John Malkovich: interesting, funny, weird. A real treat. Rotten tomatoes reviews and Amazon link.
• Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind: I find Jim Carrey really boring as a comedian, but I think he does a great job as a ‘serious’ actor. A very intense movie about the value of our memories and of each part of our lives, even the most painful ones. Would you erase parts of your life because they were too painful to remember? Movie web site, Rotten tomatoes reviews and Amazon link.
• The Royal Tenenbaums: A very funny and carefully made movie. The cast is great and really matches the characters. Incidentally, the use of Futura font across the movie is excellent. Movie web site, Rotten tomatoes reviews and Amazon link.

I should probably prepare a list of older movies that I still like (coming one day, maybe soon).

Working with Tim and quote

We have almost finished adding content to Tim’s web site, including a PDF version of his book. We have implemented the whole site using Textpattern. Yes, this is a shameless plug to get Tim’s site indexed by search engines.

Finally, the quote of the week:

Rehab is for quitters—Unknown.

In a previous post I complained about Taronga Zoo. I thought that the ticket (AUD30) was quite expensive—as anything that you could buy inside the zoo—and that the place was not that great. After arriving back in Hobart we went to Zoodoo, a wildlife park located in a farm near Richmond.

The contrast could not be bigger: the ticket was AUD12, the variety of animals much smaller but it was so much more fun. The place could be defined as a ‘red neck zoo’; there is no attempt at mimicking natural conditions for most species but its main intention is to make easy the interaction between people and zoo animals and Orlando loved it.

If you have children they will really enjoy a visit to Zoodoo. There is no serious attempt at animal conservation (compared to a normal zoo) but it certainly reinforces the love for animals.

The Tasmanian forest industry has lost contracts to supply 400,000 tonnes of woodchips to Japanese paper companies. This will certainly have an effect on industry and Forestry Tasmania already announced that it will be offering voluntary redundancies. They will most likely be targeted at non-essential jobs (trimming the fat of the organisation) so those positions will not be filled again. It would not make any sense otherwise.

While the forest industry was quick to blame Greens and other conservationists, they also have a good proportion of blame. It is true that conservationists have been tackling the customers of Japanese paper companies, in many cases with misleading information. This pushed companies like Nippon Paper to start public consultation on the issue. However, it is the Tasmanian industry’s fault to have mostly ignored this situation and clearly of being out of touch with their customers. This campaign did not happen overnight, but it has been going on for years.

There are also indications that the cost of woodchips from Tassie is becoming not very competitive. There may be some elements of hard negotiations too, with Japanese customers playing the environmental card mostly for obtaining lower prices.

Whatever the full reasons, it is clear that we have some very interesting times ahead.

I have written before about protectionism in Tasmania, but never at such a large scale. McDonalds had the chutzpa of choosing different sources of potatoes (New Zealand to be exact) and it is like they are a bunch of criminals.

Vegetable growers in Australia are saying that is unAustralian to eat foreign grown vegetables. They do not seem to realise the consequences of following that logic. Agricultural products is one of the main exports of Australia, so if other countries decide to ban foreign produce, what is going to be the market for Australian products?

Some potato growers want people to boycott McDonalds, which then would sell less french fries, requiring less potatoes, reducing even more the need for Tasmanian farmers. Brilliant!

In addition, what are the consequences of people choosing to buy local—and more expensive—products over imports? People spend more of their income in food, leaving less for other things and affecting other industries. A clear explanation can be found in these posts on protectionism and offshoring by the Angry Economist.

I also find this quote from Making Economic Sense by Murray Rothbard quite a good explanation:

Myth 10: Imports from countries where labor is cheap cause unemployment in the United States.

One of the many problems with this doctrine is that it ignores the question: why are wages low in a foreign country and high in the United States? It starts with these wage rates as ultimate givens, and doesn’t pursue the question why they are what they are. Basically, they are high in the United States because labor productivity is high—because workers here are aided by large amounts of technologically advanced capital equipment. Wage rates are low in many foreign countries because capital equipment is small and technologically primitive. Unaided by much capital, worker productivity is far lower than in the United States. Wage rates in every country are determined by the productivity of the workers in that country. Hence, high wages in the United States are not a standing threat to American prosperity; they are the result of that prosperity.

But what of certain industries in the U.S. that complain loudly and chronically about the “unfair” competition of products from low-wage countries? Here, we must realize that wages in each country are interconnected from one industry and occupation and region to another. All workers compete with each other, and if wages in industry A are far lower than in other industries, workers—spearheaded by young workers starting their careers—would leave or refuse to enter industry A and move to other firms or industries where the wage rate is higher. [p. 29]

Wages in the complaining industries, then, are high because they have been bid high by all industries in the United States. If the steel or textile industries in the United States find it difficult to compete with their counterparts abroad, it is not because foreign firms are paying low wages, but because other American industries have bid up American wage rates to such a high level that steel and textile cannot afford to pay. In short, what’s really happening is that steel, textile, and other such firms are using labor inefficiently as compared to other American industries. Tariffs or import quotas to keep inefficient firms or industries in operation hurt everyone, in every country, who is not in that industry. They injure all American consumers by keeping up prices, keeping down quality and competition, and distorting production. A tariff or an import quota is equivalent to chopping up a railroad or destroying an airline for its point is to make international transportation artificially expensive.

Tariffs and import quotas also injure other, efficient American industries by tying up resources that would otherwise move to more efficient uses. And, in the long run, the tariffs and quotas, like any sort of monopoly privilege conferred by government, are no bonanza even for the firms being protected and subsidized. For, as we have seen in the cases of railroads and airlines, industries enjoying government monopoly (whether through tariffs or regulation) eventually become so inefficient that they lose money anyway, and can only call for more and more bailouts, for a perpetual expanding privileged shelter from free competition.

A few months ago Senator Bob Brown was complaining that nothing would happen with the government’s electoral promise on forests. Last Friday—Friday 13^th, spooky—John Howard (Australia’s Prime Minister) and Paul Lennon (Tasmanian Premier) signed the ‘Supplementary Tasmanian Regional Forest Agreement’ in a visit to the Styx Valley.

The extension to the RFA includes much more than just extra reserved land:

• Extra 193,400 ha protected (148,400 ha of State Forests and 45,000 ha of voluntarily protected forests). This covers two of the most contentious areas: the Tarkine and the Styx Valley, plus a number of small areas. Out of the 148,400 ha there are 120,000 of old growth forests. The new areas are reserves and not national parks; thus, they are not available for forestry but the mining industry still can claim mining rights.
• Clearing and conversion of native forests (both old growth and regeneration forests) to other land uses (plantations, farming, etc) on public land phased out by 2010. Same situation in private land by 2015.
• Old-growth clearfelling will be reduced to 20 percent of total production (400 ha a year) by 2010, favouring partial harvesting methods. There will be no acceleration of harvest rate in old growth forest.
• There will be an expansion of hardwood plantations of 16,000 ha (most likely in converted land) to allow meeting a legal commitment of 300,000 m³/year of sawlogs and reducing reliance on old-growth forests.
• End of use of 1080 in States Forests (although this is not new) and incentives for private land owners to do the same.
• There would be an extra 213 jobs in forestry (155 direct and 53 indirect).
• There are other bits and pieces including ‘feel good’ programs of AUD 1 million for water quality assessments and AUD 2 millions for studying Tasmanian devils’s facial cancer. Not that they are not important, but they have not much to do with the rest of the RFA.

It is now clear that the delay of the announcement (from December to May) was due to intense negotiations to provide a much more comprehensive package. This extra coverage comes at a cost though; where the initial budget was AUD50 millions from the Federal Government, it increased to AUD250 millions (160 millions from the federal budget plus 90 millions from state government). There will be AUD 115 millions for intensive forest management and AUD 42 millions for the hardwood industry. This is still a small number compared to Labor’s promised AUD800 millions.

If the sign of a fair deal is that everybody is a little unhappy, we are in the presence of a good deal. The Greens and other conservationists can not stand it—the Greens call it forest torture—but nobody expected that they would like any solution to the problem, which is key to their political position in Australia. Farmers do not like the deal because it imposes restrictions on land clearing. Part of the forest industry does not like it because it reduces—and in some cases eliminate—access to to specific forest resources.

It is clear that with a reduced available forest area, there will be an intensification of silviculture of the remaining land, particularly in plantations.

Some sources:

• Full document and maps for the Supplementary Tasmanian Regional Forest Agreement 13 May 2005.
• Tasmania’s Premier press release.

Walking in Liverpool Street, Hobart, I was approached by a Wilderness Society (TWS) campaigner, who asked me if I wanted to help to keep Tasmania’s air and water clean and, ergo, protect the forests.

Of course I started questioning some of the information that she was giving me:
—‘But already forty percent of the forest is protected’, I said.
—‘No, only forty percent of the land it is’, she said.
—‘No, you are wrong in this’ and I started giving her some figures, but she kept repeating her mantra and that the Society has scientists that keep track of these figures.
—‘And what about poisoning with 1080 that causes cancer in people and the Tasmanian devils’, she insisted.
—‘May cause’, I corrected, ‘there is no proven link or any shred of evidence linking pesticides and Devil cancer’. Even further, ‘Forestry Tasmania will stop using 1080 (by law) in December this year’.
—‘We need to keep campaigning to put pressure on the government so forestry really stops using 1080…’

I kept asking questions and she kept pointing at a map in a plastic folder, saying that ‘we need to protect biodiversity, clean water, clean air and the future of our children’. Then I commented that a big chunk of what she was pointing at the map was already protected. And then she went on ‘we need to protect biodiversity, clean water, clean air and the future of our children’.

After struggling to show some knowledge of basic facts and statistics, she explained that she did not need to know the all the numbers and facts behind the problem. Her conviction of doing the right thing was enough, and other people from TWS could answer for her. That reminded me of religion lessons at school, when a priest told us what to reply in case we did not know what to say: ‘doctores tiene la iglesia que sabrán responderos mejor’. This can be loosely translated as ‘the church has doctors (sensu people that know the scriptures) that will be able to give you a better answer’. In summary: one does not need to think, but only to believe. A sad situation I would say.

She asked several times if I wanted to join with a contribution, and each time I said no. She then started saying that she could not continue talking with me, because she needed to convince other people to contribute (so I was a lost cause, I assume). She let me wondering, do campaigners work on commission?

By the way, I am not suggesting that the forest industry has a perfect record or anything similar. It is only that I find impossible to reason with people that regurgitate a mantra, without thinking or checking the most basic information freely available.

PS. 2004-02-08. Added the antepenultimate and last paragraphs. Incidentally, I do not know if this type of campaigners are volunteers or if they actually receive a payment. The comment about working on commission refers to her unwillingness to continue the discussion.

It seems that during summer time not much is happening on environmental issues in Tasmania. Plenty of people are on holidays and the news cover mostly regrettable natural disasters around the planet. Anyway, just a few things that will be—or are likely to be—happening in Tasmania during 2005:

• 1080 will stop being used in State Forests in December 2005. Therefore, Forestry Tasmania will stop its use, in the same way it stopped using Atrazine in 1997.
• Parliament will continue the discussion about repealing section 32A (112 KB, PDF file) of the Freedom of Information Act. Although Forestry Tasmania is subject to Freedom of Information law, it may request exemption under specific circumstances. FoI law still protects information considered ‘commercial in confidence’, including pricing.
• The government should make available the results of public consultation on the projected pulp mill in Northern Tasmania.
• Forestry Tasmania should make public the updated version of Alternatives to Clearfell Silviculture. They were supposed to be released around the time of the past Federal Elections. On hindsight it was good that the results were not released on time. The issue will still be political, but not more than necessary.

I doubt that there will be any real news before March.

PS. 2005-05-16. Additional reservation and other changes were announced in May.

In an unsurprising appearance in the news a few days ago, Senator Bob Brown said that nothing is going to happen with the re-elected government’s promise on Tasmanian forests, so he will not hold his breath about their conservation.

But what would happen if parts of the Tarkine were to be reserved? What would be the impact on Tasmania’s environmental debate if part of the Styx Valley became protected? I think that is highly unlikely that the whole areas — which go way above the 170,000 ha promised by the government — will be reserved. For once, it would probably break the RFA (Regional Forestry Agreement). On another front, it would be seen as too much a concession to the Greens.

However, if the heart of the Tarkine or the section of the Styx Valley that contains the tall trees (yes, a good part of the valley does not contain giant/tall trees) what would be the reaction of environmentalist organisations? They would probably claim that ‘the end is near’ and that ‘it is not enough’, despite of extending partial reservation to two icons of the Tasmanian environmental debate.

I may be wrong — and Bob Brown in the right path — and nothing will happen with this electoral promise. In fact, I normally do not trust politicians; however, in this case I think that the ‘John W. Howard’ reserve (mock name, of course) will be a reality pretty soon indeed.

PS. 2005-05-16. Additional reservation and other changes were announced in May. Bob was wrong.

Gunns has started legal action against twenty environmentalist individuals and groups, including Bob Brown, Peg Putt, the Wilderness Society and Doctors for Forests. The company is trying to recover around AU$6.36 million that claims to have lost due to:

• Logging operations disruption campaigns and actions at Lucaston, Hampshire, Triabunna and the Styx;
• Corporate vilification campaigns relating to the Burnie Woodchip site and the Banksia Awards;
• Campaigns against overseas customers of the First Plaintiff (Gunns) including customers in Japan and Belgium;
• Corporate campaigns targeting shareholders, investors and Banks.

The writ claims that the environmentalists’ campaign is a conspiracy to injure Gunns and to interfere with Gunns trade and business by unlawful means. The writ is quite large, and you can obtain a copy from Bob Brown’s website (PDF 5.4MB).

Environmentalist organisations and forest companies have used before legal action, called to Royal Commissions, lodged formal complaints, etc. Thus, there is nothing new in the ‘legal approach’ to environmental ‘debate’. However, this time Gunns is certainly aiming high in a very risky bet.

Is legal action threatening freedom of speech? I think it is hard to be conclusive about it. On one side, it may deter people voicing their opinions and genuine concerns, which would be a major drawback. On the other, there would be pressure to be more responsible when expressing dissent, particularly pushing people to ‘check facts’ and to avoid bogus claims to disqualify their opponents, which would be a major plus. I would certainly prefer a parallel universe where people would speak their minds openly always telling the truth. However, I live in this universe where legal action may be the lesser evil.

Will Gunns be able to prove the accusations presented in the writ? I find it hard to believe, particularly when (i) trying to connect cause (environmentalists actions) with effects (loss of income) and (ii) valuing the size of the effect of the campaign. It may be that Gunns is trying to establish a ‘fear factor’ (that I do not think will be achieved) or that John Gay really believes the contents of the writ and is trying to recoup some of the money. Anyway, there are interesting days ahead of us.

In a not so unrelated note, the Independent Complaints Review Panel of the ABC, found that the ‘Lords of the Forests Programs’ (aired on 16 February 2004) showed some innacuracies, unsourced visions and emotive language, which affected its balance and fairness.