11/26/02 -- Axis of Oil Threatens Global Ecocide

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FOREST CONSERVATION NEWS TODAY

Axis of Oil Threatens Global Ecocide

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Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org, Inc.

http://forests.org/ -- Forest Conservation Portal

http://www.EnvironmentalSustainability.info/ -- Eco-Portal

http://www.ClimateArk.org/ -- Climate Change Portal

November 26, 2002

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Forests.org

The Axis of Oil threatens the Earth's existence. The U.S. lead oil

oligarchy is bound and determined to rule the World; at the expense

of climate, wilderness areas, oil in our oceans and imperialistic

relations with other countries and peoples. President Bush is

pursuing "an antiregulatory agenda unmatched since the Reagan years,

filling key positions with industry lobbyists and using whatever

justification seems handy to ease up on industry." Following his

jingoistic electoral victory, he has moved swiftly in past days to

eliminate air pollution and forest protections. President Bush

threatens the existence of humanity with his regressive and dangerous

environmental agenda.

Around the World eco-defenders are organizing - often putting their

lives on the line - against the forces of tyrannical ecocide. The

Toxic Texan's policies must be defeated using all means including

peaceful mass protests as well as individual acts of bearing witness

to the necessity of an intact and functional Earth. Below are two

inspirational stories of individuals taking a stand for their Planet

and their children's future, along with information regarding

President Bush's all out declaration of war on the environment.

Organize, protest, be green - stop the Bush administration's eco-

terrorism.

g.b.

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ITEM #1

Title: Environmental War Clouds

Date: November 25, 2002

The environmental community, already battered by two years of

struggle with the Bush administration, is expecting the perfect storm

when the 108th Congress convenes in January.

For starters, the chairmanship of two key Senate committees will pass

from two reliable conservationists to men with deplorable records on

energy and the environment, James Inhofe of Oklahoma and Pete

Domenici of New Mexico. Second, the election results are likely to

encourage the administration's quiet but lethal efforts to undermine

environmental law through administrative rulemaking and judicial

negotiation.

Finally, and most depressingly, it is hard to imagine a scenario in

which this group comes up with any new and imaginative initiatives to

deal with problems that badly need attention, especially global

warming. Most people who care about such things will be so busy

preventing further rollbacks that the idea of moving forward will

seem hopelessly farfetched.

Indeed, the situation today seems virtually identical to what it was

in 1995, when Newt Gingrich and his Contract With America Republicans

swept into town determined to reverse 30 years of bipartisan

environmental law protecting the country's air, water and wilderness.

With this crucial difference: Bill Clinton isn't in the White House

anymore.

Mr. Clinton's vetoes and well-timed veto threats were crucial in

turning back the Gingrich tide. That won't happen with this

president. From day one, Mr. Bush has pursued an antiregulatory

agenda unmatched since the Reagan years, filling key positions with

industry lobbyists and using whatever justification seems handy to

ease up on industry.

Last summer's forest fires, for example, became an excuse to try to

suspend environmental reviews of logging projects. The California

energy crisis (and, later, the fear of increasing dependence on

Middle Eastern oil) have been invoked to justify pell-mell

exploration for relatively trivial amounts of oil and gas on fragile

Western lands, often in plain violation of environmental rules.

The administration's determined efforts to satisfy its corporate

allies at the expense of the environment show no signs of abating. On

Friday, it unilaterally relaxed the rules governing pollution from

old coal-fired power plants without putting any new and improved

rules in their place. Meanwhile, a story in Friday's Times disclosed

that the Interior Department has authorized new drilling projects in

Padre Island National Seashore adjacent to the Gulf of Mexico - a

sensitive landscape that is also home to an endangered breed of sea

turtle. Such is this administration's appetite for extractable

resources that no area seems safe.

Until now, legal action by advocacy groups and oversight by Senate

Democrats have helped slow the onslaught. But the election has

relegated the Democrats to a secondary role.

Instead of James Jeffords, the Vermont independent who votes with the

Democrats, we now have Mr. Inhofe as chairman of the Environment and

Public Works Committee. A reliable advocate for oil and gas

interests, Mr. Inhofe is also a longtime critic of the Clean Air Act

whose dismal ratings on environmental issues set him apart from the

pro-environment Republicans who have run the committee in the past.

Environmentalists find Mr. Domenici, the new Energy Committee

chairman, even more threatening, partly because he is such a skilled

legislator. In 1995, he contrived to attach a provision opening the

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling to a budget

reconciliation bill, causing a government shutdown when President

Clinton vetoed the bill. Mr. Domenici is certain to go after the

Arctic again, and other public lands as well.

If there is any real chance of avoiding legislative disaster it rests

with a handful of responsible Republican senators. These include

Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of

Maine, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois

and - on a few issues - John McCain of Arizona and Gordon Smith of

Oregon. Working together and in tandem with the Democrats, they can

reject President Bush's zealots and, with any luck, begin to steer

their party back to its Rooseveltian traditions of strong

environmental stewardship.

There is an honorable precedent for such a coalition. In 1995, a band

of moderates in the House organized in large part by Sherwood

Boehlert of New York beat back the worst of the Gingrich

environmental agenda. Relying on such a small band of legislators to

buck their own president is a precarious hedge against further

environmental damage. But it is the best hope the country has right

now.

ITEM #2

Title: Hunger Striker Stands Firm on Trees

After 50 days, woman is still waiting for Davis to agree to save

Date: November 26, 2002

Byline: Eric Bailey, Times Staff Writer

SACRAMENTO -- For 50 days, she is said to have survived on water and

a bit of broth, spending daylight hours in quiet protest under the

boughs of a towering old redwood beside the state Capitol.

Susan Moloney has waged her hunger strike on the lawn of the Capitol

to make a point about trees with the man who presides inside. When he

first ran for office four years ago, Gov. Gray Davis vowed to save

California's old-growth forests. He hasn't, as Moloney sees it, and

she wants him to live up to that long-ago campaign promise.

"It is indeed sad we have to do these kinds of things to get

attention," Moloney said Monday.

The governor refuses to be budged by this one-woman protest, saying

through a spokesman that those remarks from the 1998 election stump

have been misconstrued by Moloney and the media and that he has in

fact saved plenty of the old trees.

"Public policy is not made by refusing to eat," said Steve Maviglio,

Davis' spokesman. "This sort of thing is a publicity stunt, not an

effort for meaningful change."

So they remained at loggerheads Monday on the cusp of a holiday known

for feasting, not fasting: Moloney, the hunger striker, who thinks

every tree older than the state's founding in 1850 should be spared

the chain saw; and Davis, the governor, whose foes say only big

contributions get big results.

Moloney was joined Monday by Julia Butterfly Hill, the tree sitter

whose epic two-year vigil in the branches of a Humboldt County

redwood ended in 1999 after loggers agreed to sell the tree to a

nonprofit organization.

During a news conference Monday on the Capitol steps, Hill vowed to

spend Thanksgiving week -- and perhaps longer -- fasting with Moloney

to prod the governor toward adopting blanket protection for

California's oldest trees.

"We're tired of the lies and tired of the spin," Hill said. "Now is

the time for Gov. Davis to stop running from his promise."

Over the past 50 days, Moloney said, she has seen her weight drop

more than 20 pounds. At 5-foot-5, she is now a gaunt 107 pounds.

Bones in her hips and shoulders that never showed before now jut out.

A native of New York, Moloney was a computer programmer until she

moved to Humboldt County in the mid-90s and became an environmental

activist. She's now executive director of the Campaign for Old

Growth, a grass-roots group trying to put a measure on the state

ballot to ban axing all trees more than 152 years old. The group

tried to get an initiative on the November ballot, but failed to

gather enough signatures.

The ballot measure is only the most recent cause in the war to save

the North Coast redwoods, which has raged virtually unabated for more

than a decade. With plenty of tree-sitting activists already in place

on private timber tracts, Moloney began the hunger strike Oct. 7 as a

new approach to get Davis' attention.

Each workday, she spends several hours in a canvas-backed camping

chair. "It's not a Lazee Boy," she quipped, "but it's not bad."

Overhead is the huge redwood tree dedicated to Gil Murray, a timber

industry lobbyist who was the last victim of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.

Early on, a few passersby gave Moloney a razzing. One even asked,

"Want a hamburger?" Moloney, in fact, is a strict vegetarian. But

mostly, Moloney said, she has heard only kind words of support and

sympathy. Some people come up with tears in their eyes, she said,

asking that she not hurt herself.

Though one Capitol worker claims to have seen Moloney sneaking a few

Cheerios, the activist says she subsisted for the first 40 days only

on water and herbal tea. After visiting a registered nurse, Moloney

added vegetable broth and freshly juiced carrot and apple to her

diet.

The worst effect, she said, has been a growing inability to withstand

the foggy fall cold of Sacramento. She tries to outsmart it with

layers of clothing. But she can last only about three hours outside

now, forced to retreat to a friend's apartment for warmth. On

weekends, she usually gets a ride home to Garberville to be with her

family, where she said she continues to fast.

Some friends are worried she may be taking this cause too far.

"I've been begging her to quit," said Kent Stromsmoe, a Campaign for

Old Growth activist. "I'm concerned the fast will affect her

judgment. That she won't be reasonable about knowing when she should

stop."

Moloney, who has started a Web site (www.fastforoldgrowth.org) to

chart her effort, said she has no illusions about carrying on too

long, no desire to compromise her long-term health. She said her

mental acuity remains intact, and indeed during talks she seems

sharp.

"I can feel it taking its toll in several ways," she said. "But I

also feel very strong about carrying this through."

On March 14, 1998, Davis was quoted by the Associated Press declaring

to the state Planning and Conservation League in Sacramento that if

elected he would ensure "all old-growth trees are spared from the

lumberjack's ax." "His promise is unequivocal," Moloney said. "He's

made excuse after excuse about it. Now we want him to make some

positive movement toward saving old growth. That's what it's going to

take."

She suggests that the governor agree to endorse her group's proposal

to save heritage trees or declare an emergency moratorium on old-

growth harvests. Though the Davis administration played a key role in

forging the 1999 public purchase of the revered Headwaters grove in

Humboldt County, Moloney said about 7 million old trees remain

vulnerable throughout the state.

Maviglio, the governor's spokesman, said Davis in fact has a better

record of saving ancient trees than any of his predecessors.

Aside from helping forge the Headwaters deal, which spared 7,400

acres of redwood and 1,500 of ancient trees, the Davis administration

has altered logging rules to require an environmental review before

old-growth trees are cut, Maviglio said. Virtually all of

California's ecologically significant old-growth redwood forest is

now protected in state or federal parks. During Davis' watch, the

state has purchased more than 30,000 acres of second- and third-

generation forest in Del Norte and Mendocino counties.

"I think we need to judge the governor on what he's done," Maviglio

said. "There are activists who won't be satisfied unless no trees are

cut down. The governor has had to weigh such beliefs against the

thousands of jobs on the North Coast that depend on the timber

industry."

A week ago, Davis sent his forestry chief, Andrea Tuttle, out to talk

with Moloney, Maviglio said. There was no compromising, no agreement

by either camp. Davis is "absolutely" concerned about Moloney's

welfare, Maviglio said, but is convinced she has an extremist

viewpoint.

Moloney said she figures the governor needs to hear from people like

her. Though not a big campaign donor, she said, she represents

thousands of Californians who want to save the trees -- and a lot

more who expect campaign-trail vows to be kept.

"All I know is he made an important promise when he wanted our vote,"

Moloney said. "Now he seems far more interested in the desires of the

timber industry than the wishes of the majority of people in the

state."

ITEM #3

Title: Bush plans to boost logging in NW

Date: November 26, 2002

Byline: Craig Welch, Seattle Times staff reporter

The Bush administration wants to rewrite logging rules for Northwest

forests to allow for short-term damage to salmon-bearing streams,

claiming forest managers still could protect the overall health of

watersheds. The stream and fish rules, created by the Clinton

administration, were the foundation for a series of high-profile

environmental lawsuits that have tied up hundreds of Forest Service

and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) timber sales since 1999.

The agencies' proposed rule change will go through a nine-month

review process, but both supporters and opponents expect the proposal

to wind up in court.

Administration officials yesterday suggested the proposed new

language was a clarification of existing forest policy that had been

misinterpreted by the courts.

But environmentalists dismissed that characterization as "revisionist

history at its worst."

"They're saying, 'We may be degrading a few acres, but don't worry,

overall, things are going to get better. Trust us,' " said Andy

Stahl, director of the whistle-blower group Forest Service Employees

for Environmental Ethics. "And they're saying, this is what (the

Clinton administration) meant all along."

But industry groups said it was about time.

"The agencies do protect water and fisheries," said Chris West,

spokesman for the American Forest Resource Council, a timber-industry

group. "The successes environmental groups have had have been on pure

technicalities."

Yesterday's announcement is in response to a court ruling last year

that shelved 120 or more timber sales on thousands of acres in

Washington, Oregon and Northern California.

But it's also part of a broad administration push to boost Northwest

timber harvests back to levels agencies originally projected under

the landmark 1994 Northwest Forest Plan.

That plan attempted to balance the demand for timber with the need to

protect dwindling spotted-owl habitat. It made logging off limits on

roughly 80 percent of 24.5 million acres of federal land in the three

states. Agencies had projected loggers could take 811 million board

feet of timber a year off remaining lands, but in recent years they

haven't come close.

The industry took out only 145 million board feet of timber in 2000,

and 300 million in 2001.

President Bush, who generated more than $1 million in contributions

from the timber industry during one campaign stop in 2000, had

promised to try to increase logging access to the woods.

"The BLM has had a hard time meeting its projections and the main

reason is the variety of lawsuits," said BLM spokesman Chris Strebig.

The bulk of those lawsuits have focused on two facets of the plan,

both of which the administration is now moving to change.

One, called "survey and manage," refers to guidelines that require

forest officials to survey for hundreds of plants, fungi and wildlife

that depend on old-growth forests before approving a timber sale.

Earlier this fall, the administration announced it wants to recast

those rules.

The other area was the so-called "aquatic conservation strategy,"

which the administration moved to rework yesterday.

In June 2001, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that forest

managers weren't considering the short-term or cumulative impacts

timber harvests have on threatened coho-salmon runs.

Instead, the federal managers had been looking 10 to 20 years into

the future and deciding how or whether each sale by itself affected

the overall watershed.

Not counting the BLM timber sales, the Forest Service's sales alone

that were stalled by the ruling would have produced 250 million board

feet of timber.

"They'd been rubber-stamping these individual timber plans and saying

that, with restoration projects, over time, is part of a bigger

strategy to protect the watershed," said Glen Spain, with the Pacific

Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, which filed the

original suit.

"But if you do enough of these little projects, you won't have much

of a watershed."

While logging projects can take place on a few dozen or a few hundred

acres, watersheds are often 20 to 200 square miles in size. The

Forest Service and BLM contend they still do look at site-specific

effects of logging on salmon streams, but that it isn't practical to

evaluate each project with the same depth they use to review

watershed-level impacts, said Phil Mattson, assistant director of

strategic planning for the Forest Service in Portland.

Instead, they say, existing standards and guidelines for individual

projects, if followed, are adequate to protect the watershed.

In other words, "even though there may be some short-term effects,

the overall aquatic quality will continue to improve," said Forest

Service spokesman Rex Holloway.

For timber interests, the proposed change is long overdue.

"We asked the previous administration to pursue this, to no avail,"

said West. "It's ironic that the Bush administration is doing what

has to be done to make the Clinton-Gore forest plan work."

Environmentalists, meanwhile, also found irony. Said Stahl: "Having

been beat up by the District Court, then the 9th Circuit, now Bush is

saying, 'Wait, we'll just change it to what Clinton really meant.' "

ITEM #4

Title: Tree-Sitter Hangs On During High Winds

Activists to continue protest in defiance of plans to move the old

Santa Clarita Valley oak.

Date: November 26, 2002

Byline: Carol Chambers, Times Staff Writer

Winds gusting up to 70 mph were not enough to drive activist John

Quigley from his treetop perch Monday near Santa Clarita.

"It's been a wild ride today," Quigley said on Day 25 of his vigil in

a 400-year-old oak that he and local environmentalists are trying to

save. He said the winds had not shaken his resolve.

"I got word about the winds in the morning, so I cleaned house up

here by tying everything down and double-strapping myself on,"

Quigley said, gripping a branch and peering down from the door-sized

plank he's called home since Nov. 1.

Quigley was making plans to spend Thanksgiving in the tree, nicknamed

Old Glory, "as long as it stands and doesn't get blown over in this

wind."

The experienced tree-sitter was recruited by local environmentalists

to help prevent the oak from being felled by developers.

Subdivision developer John Laing Homes plans to widen adjacent Pico

Canyon Road from two lanes to four to accommodate future growth in

the area.

Bill Rattazzi, president of John Laing Homes, announced last week

that the company had decided to move the tree to a nearby park at a

cost of more than $250,000.

Rattazzi has hired experts successful in transplanting oaks to

oversee the operation. The job is expected to begin this week.

But Quigley and the tree supporters said they believe moving the

giant oak will kill it.

Rosi Dagit, one of several certified arborists who examined the tree

Monday, called it a "poor candidate for transplantation."

"If you move the tree, you are not saving it," said Dagit of the

Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains. "The

tree might live five years, but it would be dying slowly, and all

you'd have left is expensive firewood."

Meanwhile, activists are making plans to continue their protest, even

if it means going to jail for trespassing.

Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies have made no arrests but could

be required to do so if John Laing Homes -- which owns the property

where the oak sits -- ask that Quigley and the protesters be forcibly

removed.

On Sunday, the oak supporters conducted training sessions in

nonviolent resistance. If there is an attempt to remove them, they

said, it could be before Thanksgiving.

"Any attempt to destroy this tree -- and we believe that means moving

it -- will be met with resistance," activist Tom Barron said. "It

depends on what level of obstruction is required. We have soccer moms

out here who are willing to be arrested to save Old Glory."

The protesters said some residents are planning to bring turkey,

stuffing and all the trimmings Thursday to celebrate Thanksgiving

with them under the tree.

Quigley said that as much as he would like to spend the holiday with

his family at home in Pacific Palisades, he'll be in the tree.

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