I think extra knowledge in the space of the environment often leads to indecision which is certainly it's own drawback but I think these choices are not without tradeoffs that should be acknowledged.
I'm only a software engineer and have no understanding of hydrological cycles, but I suspect the evaporation and precipitation of that alone would have an impact on the nearby watersheds used for drinking water.
Seattle started building water treatment plants in 1961 and they entered service throughout the 1960s: https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/dnrp/waste-services/wastewate...
Meanwhile, Victoria, BC (Canada) continued to dump raw sewage into the ocean until 2021: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/victoria-sew...
Pollutants don't evaporate with water. They're left behind. Acid rain was from pollutants in the air mixing with water droplets.
We still use lumber, if it isn't locally harvested we buy it from another part of the world, outsourcing those externalities and throwing in all the extra costs of shipping, labor overhead for the various middlemen, customs, etc.
My point isn't that we're screwed and should just chop down forests because we're damned if we do and damned if we don't. But saving one forest won't fix anything by itself and could very well make things worse if we don't do it by simply reducing the number of resources we consume. Paying someone else to own the externalities will never help.
Could this happen in a way that benefits American construction interests but also Canadian lumber exporting interests?
If there's ever some dispute about it could it be mediated somehow?
What would the outcome of that possibly be?
The size of the forests isn't really relevant; compared to lumber demand, they're mostly insignificant. Humans have never had a problem wiping out local forests.
What matters is how much wood a forest can produce per year, not how much has accumulated over the course of the past.
Once you get further north the taigas are colder and slower growing and may take 200 years or longer to grow back.
The best thing for the USA is to use the resources which supports jobs in logging, wood processing, transportation, and have lower costs associated with transportation and fees from importation. I'm not against importing timber into very northern parts of the US but there is no reason to ONLY use canadian timber.
Assuming that stripping resources from other parts of the world is how we got into this ecological mess in the first place.
Isn't that already happening?
https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/USA/Yea...
We need to not be logging, period. There's a huge difference in selectively felling trees locally and commercial logging. The problem is that we have collectively grown so accustomed to immediate gratification and the appearance of unlimited resources that we've completely disconnected from how the world really works.
If we really want to fix anything meaningful it's going to take people realizing that cheap energy from coal and oil, combined with paying someone else to deal with the immediate ecological damages caused, aren't sustainable approaches to living here.
I know when they were first proposing the project the state was going to limit them to a couple hundred acre clear cuts and Campbell had their own limit at less than that. Unless that number increased dramatically, I'd say the project is a success mainly because they just aren't logging a meaningful amount of timber at all.
Someone actually just clear cut a few hundred acres down the street from me before the locals ran the investor out of town. It's terrible to see it cleared and it's basically just a massive, open, festering wound now but st the end of the data a few hundred acres of timber is a drop in the bucket relative to what we actually consume.
Can you elaborate on the problems?
Tree roots also greatly reduce erosion, which means that rainfall is more likely to end up in a few well-established waterways and less likely to be spread across numerous tiny rivulets; it also means that waterways are less likely to change shape over time. Large, stable waterways are much easier to collect water from (e.g., via dammed reservoirs) than small or unstable waterways.
However, I'm not sure how much of a factor erosion is here. I suspect it will only directly impact small communities that rely on minor waterways for drinking water. (Mind you, when small communities connect up to city water because their existing water supply becomes unreliable, that can affect the city's water supply.)
I don't know a ton about forest ecology but my sense is that trees that do the best are a function of what's already there and that it takes much longer than 100 years for the pre-clear cut conditions to return.
Different tree species can also be more or less effective at functioning as a buffer. "Thirsty" trees typically do a better job of taking up water when it's wet and continuing to release water when it's dry. (Unfortunately, many new tree plantings favor more drought-resistant trees because they are easier to grow in clearcut fields, which are drier than forests.)
So, because I don't know much about this region specifically, these are my two questions:
Has there been a change in tree biomass in the region?
Has there been a change in the tree species makeup of the region?
https://www.seattle.gov/utilities/protecting-our-environment...
Specifically, here is the forest management plan, which goes into great detail about the current conditions, their effects on the water cycle, and the long term objectives:
https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/SPU/Environmen...
I spent a few years in my 20s volunteering for ecological restoration projects in the watershed. We dug up old logging roads, removed invasive species (Japanese knotweed, ugh!), deconstructed landscaping left over from abandoned small towns, did erosion control along creeks in logged areas, restored riverside habitats, and planted lots of native trees and shrubs. I am not in touch with the organization anymore, but I'll always feel some pride in the work we did and a sense of connection to the place.
> Specifically, here is the forest management plan, which goes into great detail about the current conditions, their effects on the water cycle, and the long term objectives:
This is a 130 page document. The first few pages mentioning old-growth forest are mostly discussing habitat for fauna. Is there a more specific part of the document discussing hydrological impact?
> I spent a few years in my 20s volunteering for ecological restoration projects in the watershed. We dug up old logging roads, removed invasive species (Japanese knotweed, ugh!), deconstructed landscaping left over from abandoned small towns, did erosion control along creeks in logged areas, restored riverside habitats, and planted lots of native trees and shrubs. I am not in touch with the organization anymore, but I'll always feel some pride in the work we did and a sense of connection to the place.
Very cool! My only connection to this is that my mom worked for SPU in drinking water.
In the case of lottery / casino revenues, the initial messaging was that these would provide additional funds for education. In time, general funds allocations for education have declined, justified by the availability of gambling taxes, funds, and fees. That's on top of further problems and externalities of gambling, including gambling addiction, organised crime, political corroption, and the like.
See for example: "The Big Lie: Gambling and Education Funding" (2012) <https://www.thinkingpoker.net/2012/10/the-big-lie-gambling-a...>.
Aka a scam.
Isn't this just conflating states that do that with other states that don't?
Oregon keeps the general fund and the lottery fund separate, 53% of the lottery fund goes to education (the rest to other voter-approved programs).
Year 0: general fund hands 100m to schools.
Year 1: General fund hands 101m / year and lotteries add 10m to that yay! 111m for school, or except ‘inflation’ was 2% so it’s more like 109m.
Year 2: General fund hands 102m / year and lottery adds 10.2m, ‘inflation’ was 2%. So adjusting for inflation Schools get ~108 million and general fund only spends ~98m.
Repeat as needed until general fund is handing the equivalent of 90m with the slack taken up by the lottery.
> Repeat as needed until general fund is handing the equivalent of 90m with the slack taken up by the lottery.
The lottery picking up the slack so that the general fund doesn’t have to do all of it is the whole point.
That’s identical to the lottery just putting money directly into the general fund. Unless the funding source results in an increase in total funding this stuff is pure theatre.
> That’s identical to the lottery just putting money directly into the general fund.
While that's true, your example upthread seems to obscure the fact rather than illustrate it. Try this one:
1. (19X3) Oregon funds its public school system to the tune of $70 million. This is "not enough".
2. (19X4) Oregon implements a lottery dedicated to funding the school system. In the meantime, it funds the schools to the tune of $70 million.
3. (19X5) The lottery system has been set up; it provides $20 million just for the schools. Oregon makes up the rest by contributing $50 million out of the general fund.
Where did the money from the lottery go? Not to the schools. The cash flow table clearly shows that funding to the schools hasn't increased while the general fund is up $20 million. Inflation isn't relevant. Allocations from the general fund are discretionary.
Bonus: cut education enough, and it even gets easier to do!
The article is discussing federal forests. The timberlands in Oregon are owned by private, federal and state entities.
Forests managed for for timber by the state are protected differently, like, first to get sprinkler lines in a wildfire. They are a crop which is invested in and harvested. Federal forests are easier to log after a burn anyway, and you can log outside the burn with that cover. The United States Forest Service (USFS) is actually, basically, a road building and logging company, but owls and so on really got in the way for a couple decades. We're figuring out how to keep logging. We're capitalists.
The only state forests with old growth are going to be the "experimental" state forests in the Cascades and the Olympic and Coast ranges. Otherwise we woulda logged 'em. I mean there are old growth pine trees and juniper in Oregon and Washington east of the Cascades, a few, but those aren't timberlands.