Loggers' Suit Alleges Ecological 'Religion'
12/1/99
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY
Following is an account of loggers taking forest conservation groups
to court for allegedly forcing their Deep Ecology religious believes
on the United States Forest Service. This suit is a shameless
debacle. The loss of logging jobs is tragic but inevitable. The
boom is over. How badly the bust treats us all will depend on how
zealously we conserve remaining forests and pursue the age of forest
restoration. Scientific, economic, spiritual and other means of
knowing and understanding this global ecological crisis are equally
valid, and critical to finding solutions to these complex issues.
g.b.
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Title: Loggers' Suit Alleges Ecological 'Religion'
Source: Los Angeles Times
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: November 30, 1999
Byline: Stephanie Simon
ST. PAUL, Minn.--In the velvety quiet of Minnesota's forests, the
U.S. government has buckled to zealotry.
The zealots decreed: Trees are sacred. Thou shalt not cut. And the
government did their bidding. Such is the theory behind an unusual
lawsuit that accuses the U.S. Forest Service of foisting the
"religion" of the Deep Ecology movement on all Americans by adopting
it as a guiding policy for timber management.
The suit, filed here last month by a coalition of loggers,
essentially contends that environmentalists have won. They have
bamboozled the Forest Service into accepting their "religious"
conviction that trees have spiritual value and thus should not be cut
down. The loggers claim the Forest Service's restrictions on timber
sales violate the Constitution because the government is promoting
one religion above others.
"They're imposing this belief on me, and on everyone else in
America," complained David Glowaski, a third-generation logger who
says the restrictions have put his industry in "very, very, very dire
straits."
Fed up and fearful for their livelihoods, the loggers are suing not
only the Forest Service but also two environmental groups that have
tied up timber sales in northern Minnesota's two national forests.
The lawsuit calls attention to the growing spiritual dimension of the
environmental movement--raising intriguing questions about when
passion for a cause becomes religion.
"Environmental issues are, for many people, religious issues," said
Bron Taylor, a professor of both environmental and religious studies
at the University of Wisconsin.
"Many Americans, not just extremists, view certain areas like
Yellowstone or Yosemite as sacred and think they ought not be used
for economic enterprise," Taylor added. "Whenever people invoke the
language of the sacred, we're entering the realm of religion."
Others contend that respect for nature, no matter how profound, is no
more a religion than appreciation for fine wine or zeal for the Green
Bay Packers.
"It's not religion, it's just basic values," said Fred Krueger, who
runs the Religious Campaign for Forest Conservation, a coalition that
sees environmentalism as complementing, not competing with,
traditional faith.
Courts are just starting to address the subject. In a recent New
York case, for instance, a federal judge held that a public school's
Earth Day ceremony crossed the line into religious advocacy when
students were asked to give gifts to Mother Earth and to listen to
prayers to a "Holy Earth Mother." A nonprofit group dedicated to
keeping religion out of public life has compiled a long list of other
alleged offenses, such as a forest ranger urging kids to feel a
tree's spirit by hugging it.
Suit Is 'Nonsense,' Law Professor Says
Although the Supreme Court has never expressly defined "religion," it
has consistently held that mere philosophies don't qualify, said
Michael Stokes Paulsen, a University of Minnesota law professor who
thinks the loggers' suit is "just nonsense." A religion need not have
formal services or even a deity, but it must be built around a
comprehensive belief system that's as all-important as God is to
traditional religions.
The attorney representing the loggers, Stephen Young, believes Deep
Ecology passes that test.
Introduced by a Norwegian philosopher in the 1970s, Deep Ecology
holds that the natural world has intrinsic worth. It is not a
commodity. And humans have no right to plunder it or to tamper with
the grand sweep of evolution by destroying habitat or driving species
to extinction. To Deep Ecologists, thinking about a tree solely in
terms of its dollar value as timber is as ludicrous as calculating
the price of your mother as hamburger.
To Young, it's clear this philosophy constitutes a religion because
it offers believers a comprehensive framework for understanding the
cosmos and their place in it. In his view, pressing Deep Ecology on
the Forest Service amounts not to lobbying but to proselytizing.
"You can preach that trees are sacred, that the Earth is my mother,
the sun is my father and all that. But in demanding that the
government accept your beliefs, you've crossed the line," said Young,
the former dean of Hamline Law School in St. Paul.
The accusation baffles legal scholars who say everyone, even if
motivated by religion, has a right to petition the government.
For their part, the environmentalists named as defendants are
dumbfounded. True, they believe--and believe with urgent passion--
that the U.S. should not allow logging on public land. True too, they
have filed appeals and protests to force the Forest Service to
rethink certain timber sales.
But they insist that religion never enters their work. In fact, their
protests are not spiritual but technical, as they point out flaws in
environmental impact reports and financial projections.
"We're not coming at this from a church; we're coming at it from a
school of economics," said Sam Hitt, executive director of the
nonprofit Forest Guardians.
"I just want the forest there for my kids. That's the main reason I
do this," said Ray Fenner, executive director of the Superior
Wilderness Action Network. "I like to walk in the woods. If they want
to call that religious . . . ." With a grin, Fenner adds that as a
missionary he's a flop.
His protests have delayed some timber sales. But he counts just one
outright victory in the last decade: blocking logging on 1,500 acres
of black spruce. So he can hardly claim the Forest Service as a
convert to his view.
To be sure, logging in national forests in the Minnesota region has
dropped by nearly 25% over the last four years. And it now takes much
longer for loggers to get the permits they need; in some cases, the
paperwork is delayed three years to allow detailed environmental
impact reports. But a Forest Service spokeswoman attributed those
developments as much to congressional meddling (more rules to follow,
less money to work with) as to environmental appeals.
In any case, it's perfectly legal for a government policy to be
consistent with one religion or another. The law against murder, for
instance, traces back to the Ten Commandments. But that doesn't mean
the government has adopted Judaism as a guiding faith. Or take
abortion. Catholics may lobby against it on religious grounds.
Lawmakers may enact partial restrictions. That doesn't mean
government has promoted Catholicism above all other religions.
Young grants that point. Yet he insists his case is different.
There are secular, scientific reasons to outlaw murder or limit
abortion, he argues. Yet there's no good reason to ban logging in
national forests other than a religious reverence for trees.
"Government policy must be based on science, on common sense, on the
secular political process," Young said. A ban on logging, he
maintains, is not.
Environmentalists counter with an arsenal of scientific
justification. They bring in biology: the need to maintain diverse
ecosystems. They discuss economics: Taxpayers could earn more from
their national forests by opening them to recreation than by grinding
them in pulp mills, they insist.
They talk too of a secular goal: Preserving the wild for their
children. "I look at my daughters and think, 'What is going to be
left for them when they're my age?' " Fenner said. To loggers, the
issue is just as emotional.
Federal Land Provides Substantial Income
They've been chopping down trees for generations. And they don't see
the world as worse off for it. In fact, they view themselves as
tending the forest, not destroying it.
Although less than 4% of the nation's wood supply comes from public
land, loggers in some parts of Minnesota rely on the national forests
for up to half their income. To them then, this lawsuit is a matter
of survival.
Newspaper editorials from around the state have ridiculed the
loggers' approach. "This lawsuit reads like fiction," one read.
"Scary," another commented. Ran a third: "The judge should hoot this
litigation out of court."
But Glowaski is convinced the loggers will prevail. The way he sees
it, there must be something illegal about environmentalists with a
soft spot for trees forcing him out of the woods he too cherishes. "I
feel I have a right," he said, "to make a living off the land."