It sometimes seems as if the past decade never occurred; as if the various peacemaking initiatives such as the Commission on Resources and the Environment never existed; as if the hundreds of planning sessions involving a large portion of the province's population never took place; as if the thousands of earnest documents were never written; as if the millions (or tens of millions) of dollars spent on trying to find solutions to the forest-use conflict had been invested in moonbeams.

To its credit, the New Democratic Party government under Mike Harcourt made a valiant attempt to end the valley-by-valley, cutblock-by-cutblock fight over the forests. Through a variety of processes, it attempted to develop regional land-use plans that everyone concerned could buy into.

Some failed from the outset; others appeared to have worked. Now, it doesn't seem to have made much difference.

In spite of an agreed-upon protected-area strategy for southwestern B.C., a battle is being waged over the Elaho Valley, which environmentalists who took part in the process agreed would not be included in a new park created in that area.

In Clayoquot Sound, where a protracted fight was concluded with a complex and sophisticated land-use plan, a new struggle has erupted over logging in the working forest adjacent to protected areas.

A vast area of the mid-coast is in dispute, with environmental activists from around the world insisting that an entire region of the province be exempted from industrial activity. And so it goes, around the rest of the province; a small skirmish here, a major battle there.

All of this is happening in spite of the fact that the forest industry has transformed itself to a degree that was unimaginable 20 years ago; in spite of a highly -- even overly restrictive -- Forest Practices Code imposed on the industry; in spite of a lemming-like rush by every forest company in B.C. to have its operations certified as environmentally sound.

So, what is going on here?

Why are forest workers' jobs still threatened? Why are forest-dependent communities still in jeopardy? Why aren't urban yuppies permitted to spend the summer basking on the beach without feeling guilty because they are not suspended from an old Douglas fir tree, protecting it from loggers?

Partly, it's happening because there are still too many senior people in the forest industry waiting for things to get back to "normal."

H.R. MacMillan foresaw the advent of these people more than 50 years ago when he predicted that new forest policies being adopted by the government -- policies that still apply -- would lead to a few companies controlling the resource and creating a monopoly that would "be managed by professional bureaucrats, fixers with a penthouse viewpoint who, never having had rain in their lunch buckets, would abuse the forest."

These are the people who still think their business consists of knocking 'em down, dragging 'em out, and cutting 'em up. They do not see, or are not willing to accept, that from here on in the fundamental task of the industry is the intensive, inclusive management of forests.

They are the people who resist the restructuring of the industry so it can perform this function because they cannot see beyond the next quarter's bottom line.

The industry is woefully bereft of any kind of vision of its future that is not a carbon copy of its past and is devoid of the calibre of leadership needed to forge that vision.

It is rudderless, drifting before the shifting market winds, reacting weakly to attacks upon it.

The environmentalists, too, lack a vision. The aging veterans of the forest wars, some who have been around 25 years or more, are equally rudderless. They see every tree not cut, every hectare not logged, as some kind of victory.

Their notions about what will happen to all these protected forests are as vague as their ideas about how the people of B.C. will feed and clothe themselves.

They have become institutionalized, needing new battles, new campaigns, another "last watershed" to maintain their support, their funding, their jobs -- their very reason for existence. They have no role or function in a province where the forests are either protected or well-managed, so they cling to the rhetoric and tactics of the past.

And if they should contemplate relaxing, or savouring the real victories they have won, there is a new generation of activists searching for causes who will gladly take up the fight.

If every environmentalist in B.C. were to retire from the field, satisfied with the resolution of his or her concerns, the woods wars would not end.

B.C.'s forests have become a global battlefield, attracting a transient legion of zealous cannon fodder, financed by foreign foundations that obtain their funds speculating in stocks of the corporations they seek to destroy.

This is the flip side of the globalization coin.

To top things off, we have a lame-duck government that hasn't a clue about what to do. Error: Unable to read footer file.