Forest Cutting Ethical and Practical

Forest Cutting

Ethical and Practical Issues in Deforestation

The fact that the United States is (for now) the world's largest economy and is in many other ways the most powerful nation in international matters has given the country a duty, in the minds of some, to protect the interests of the world at large from abuses by despots of both a governmental and a commercial nature. The destruction of the rainforests of South America is seen by many as one such form of despotism, and there are many active movements in the United States that use various means to preserve, or at least attempt to preserve, these rainforests from their destructions. There are a number of reasons that the rainforests are considered worthy of protection, but efforts in the United States attempting to pressure governments and companies operating in countries like Brazil lose a great deal of credibility when the track record of deforestation in this country is examined.

When the white North American settlers first encountered the old-growth conifer forest of the Pacific Northwest, nearly twenty million acres of what are now the western portions of Washington and Oregon belonged to some of the oldest and largest trees anywhere in the world, and a host of other life supported by the ecosystem these trees served as the foundation of (Foster 1991). Road building, farmland clearing, and eventually commercial logging have seen that number dwindle over the past two centuries to just under two-and-a-half million acres, or a little over a tenth of what used to be (Foster 1991). This rate of deforestation makes it difficult to insist that other countries and companies follow better practices during their periods of development than the United States did in its own.

Unlike in many other countries, where deforestation is largely the result of bad farming practices as subsistence cultures compete for scarcer and scarcer arable land, in Brazil the destruction of the rainforest is driven at least in part by misguided commercial farming and pasture ventures, or by companies often working in collusion with or with the ignorant approval of the government in exploiting the forest's resources (Butler 2008). The levels of deforestation that occur in Brazil is quite clearly related to the economic progress of the country over time; periods of economic slowdown coincide with reduced levels of deforestation, and when commerce picks up again more and more rainforest gets destroyed (Butler 2008). In addition to the simple lack of legitimate standing that the United States has in requesting that Brazil curtail its deforestation activities, this economic aspect of the issue complicates things still further, and will likely make reduction efforts more difficult.

The United States was also very much economically dependent on the old-growth conifer forests of the Pacific Northwest during the period of heavy deforestation that occurred there. This dependence was not as total as Brazil's is, due to the sheer size of the country and abundance of other resources in the nation, but during the development of the nineteenth century especially the lumber that the old -- growth forests provided -- as well as the land that was used for farming once the trees had been cleared -- were vital elements of the continuing expansion of the nation (Foster 1991). Brazil is experiencing its own era of rapid economic expansion in the current era, and limiting its deforestation would limit this growth potential.

In this light, it becomes difficult to see how the United States or anyone living there can simply ask Brazil to stop the massive deforestation of its rainforests when it benefited in a far similar way from the deforestation of its old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest. This does not mean that such a request is without merit, however, and in fact there is a very simple way for the United States to make this request appear more reasonable. Instead of simply protesting the deforestation, methods for achieving the same economic growth and expansion without necessitating the destruction of the rainforests should be developed and offered to the Brazilians, perhaps with the sponsorship of the groups that currently stage rainforest protests and demonstrations. This would show that the people of the United States have actually learned form their mistakes, and are not simply giving commands to other sovereign nations but are truly trying to help them avoid the same pitfalls.