John Perlin on Sustainable Forestry

Last night I was lucky enough to have snagged a front-row seat to listen to a talk by John Perlin —  author, lecturer, and consultant in solar energy and forest preservation.  A physics scholar at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Perlin gave a fascinating presentation on the role that wood has played in our civilization over the last 6000 years, culminating in the need to take care of our few remaining forests in the 21st Century. 

The only issue I had with the whole thing was the absence of any mention as to what we’re doing right now as an attempt at sustainable forestry.  I’m sure it’s nowhere near as robust as it needs to be, but I know for a fact that there are numerous groups working to preserve the Amazon – in fact, I’m a member of one of them – Amazon Watch.  Also, it would be interesting to know what the US-based lumber giants (Weyerhaeuser, Boise Cascade, Georgia Pacific, etc.) are doing in North America; I also think basic fairness necessitates covering this topic at some level.

I commented in the Q&A session that followed: “Yes, there are lots of unsustainable things we can do to our forests.  Right now, we’re losing 1.8 acres of the Amazon rain forest per second.  In the time it will take for me to make my point here, we will have lost an area the size of a golf course.  Not only is that not sustainable, that’s deplorable.  But I would bet that if we had a representative of Georgia Pacific here tonight, we’d all walk away at least somewhat impressed with the way today’s lumber businesses go about their work in harvesting and replanting trees.”