Bush on Fire
August 27, 2002
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Round up the usual suspects! George W. Bush's new "Healthy
Forests" plan reads like a parody of his administration's
standard operating procedure. You see, environmentalists
cause forest fires, and those nice corporations will solve
the problem if we get out of their way.
Am I being too harsh? No, actually it's even worse than it
seems. "Healthy Forests" isn't just about scrapping
environmental protection; it's also about expanding
corporate welfare.
Everyone agrees that the forests' prime evil is a
well-meaning but counterproductive bear named Smokey.
Generations of fire suppression have led to a dangerous
accumulation of highly flammable small trees and
underbrush. And in some - not all - of the national forests
it's too late simply to reverse the policy; thanks to
growing population and urban sprawl, some forests are too
close to built-up areas to be allowed to burn.
Clearly, some of the excess fuel in some of the nation's
forests should be removed. But how? Mr. Bush asserts that
there is a free lunch: allowing more logging that thins out
the national forests will both yield valuable resources and
reduce fire risks.
But it turns out that the stuff that needs to be removed -
small trees and bushes, in areas close to habitation - is
of little commercial value. The good stuff, from the
industry's point of view, consists of large, mature trees -
the kind of trees that usually survive forest fires - which
are often far from inhabited areas.
So the administration proposes to make deals with logging
companies: in return for clearing out the stuff that should
be removed, they will be granted the right to take out
other stuff that probably shouldn't be removed. Notice that
this means that there isn't a free lunch after all. And
there are at least three severe further problems with this
plan.
First, will the quid pro quo really be enforced, or will
loggers simply make off with the quid and forget about the
quo? The Forest Service, which would be in charge of
enforcement, has repeatedly been cited by Congress's
General Accounting Office for poor management and lack of
accountability. And the agency, true to Bush administration
form, is now run by a former industry lobbyist. (In the
2000 election cycle, the forest products industry gave 82
percent of its contributions to Republicans.) You don't
have to be much of a cynic to question whether loggers will
really be held to their promises.
Second, linking logging of mature trees to clearing of
underbrush is a policy non sequitur. Suppose Mayor Mike
Bloomberg announced that Waste Management Inc. would pick
up Manhattan's trash free, in return for the right to dump
toxic waste on Staten Island. Staten Island residents would
protest, correctly, that if Manhattan wants its garbage
picked up, it should pay for the service; if the city wants
to sell companies the right to dump elsewhere, that should
be treated as a separate issue. Similarly, if the federal
government wants to clear underbrush near populated areas,
it should pay for it; if it wants to sell the right to log
mature trees elsewhere, that should be a separate decision.
And this gets us to the last point: In fact, the government
doesn't make money when it sells timber rights to loggers.
According to the General Accounting Office, the Forest
Service consistently spends more money arranging timber
sales than it actually gets from the sales. How much money?
Funny you should ask: last year the Bush administration
stopped releasing that information. In any case, the
measured costs of timber sales capture only a fraction of
the true budgetary costs of logging in the national
forests, which is supported by hundreds of millions of
dollars in federal subsidies, especially for road-building.
This means that, environmental issues aside, inducing
logging companies to clear underbrush by letting them log
elsewhere would probably end up costing taxpayers more, not
less, than dealing with the problem directly.
So as in the case of the administration's energy policy,
beneath the free-market rhetoric is a plan for increased
subsidies to favored corporations. Surprise.
A final thought: Wouldn't it be nice if just once, on some
issue, the Bush administration came up with a plan that
didn't involve weakened environmental protection, financial
breaks for wealthy individuals and corporations and reduced
public oversight?
