A book by Alston Chase, published by Boston Houghton Mifflin, 1995
Chase's Argument
How can someone write a five hundred page book on the ecology movement and the politics of forests in the Pacific northwest, including over 80 pages of footnotes, and get the story so wrong? That was the question that perplexed me when I finished reading Chase's In A Dark Wood. Reading the first several chapters of this book, I thought Chase was about to engage in some constructive social and philosophical analysis. Instead, each chapter got weirder and weirder. I felt like Alice walking through the looking glass.
Chase claims he is engaged in an objective analysis of the ecology movement. He claims he is fair to both the ecologists and the loggers. Not so. His intent is to debunk and discredit the ecology movement and to present industrial loggers as innocent victims of what he calls "the rising tyranny of ecology." He portrays forest activists as preservationists who are guided by biocentrismÑa philosophy that, he claims, unwittingly leads to fascism.
Chase claims that ecology is not a science. It is a philosophy and a philosophy grounded in German metaphysics, especially in Hegel. Chase claims the philosophy of ecology is dangerous to Western civilization. He dismisses Arne Naess as just another misguided follower of Hegel even though Naess has grounded much of his own philosophy in Spinoza.
In his chapters on the battles over forests in the Pacific northwest, Chase dismisses forest ecologists as people who confuse fact with value, who are engaged in poor science, and who are activist preservationists who disregard the findings of their own studies.
Chase says nature is change, not stability. Nature is resilient, civilizations are fragile. Based on those premises, Chase argues that the Endangered Species Act is both poor science and based on anti-human philosophy. Large scale salvage logging, below cost timber sales, clearcutting of ancient forests, and human caused extinctions are all part of wise use forestry.
In Chase's narrative, the most misguided, dangerous theory in ecology is the theory of ecosystem stability. There is no "balance of nature", says Chase, and ecosystem management is another term for preservation. "Like the notion of purposeful evolution, the ecosystem served as an ultimate standard of morality, changing the very meaning of life. Just as evolution-as-progress seemingly enhanced the significance of humans, so ecosystems seemed to diminish it. As eugenics measured people by where they fit on the scale of being, the ecological vision judged them on whether they performed or usurped their proper role in the ecosystem." (p.118)
The idea of biocentrism won, according to Chase, in the cultural battle over forests of the Pacific northwest. After 1990, the idea of biocentrism became part of the ideology of the upper class supporters of the ecology movement, part of official government policy, and accepted by forest activists. "Embracing teleology, it confused philosophy with science and fact with value. Filling a vacuum created by the death of the Lockean consensus, it embraced new values based on systems ecology, which from the beginning was less a preservation science than a program for social control. Supposing that protecting ecosystems was the highest imperative for government, it increasingly viewed the exercise of individual liberty as a threat." (p.413)
The battle over forests of the Pacific Northwest, and especially the battle over old growth redwoods in Humboldt county, California, is a battle over the philosophical bedrock of Western civilization. This battle is class warfare. "Promoted by government, activists, and scientists, biocentrism had become a philosophy of America's ruling classesÑthe media, government, universities, church hierarchy, and teaching professions." (p.359).
In the last half of of this book, in the chapters on the forests of the Pacific northwest, Chase sounds more and more like he is writing a public relations statement for the industrial logging industryÑthere is no need to reduce levels of timber extraction from the excessive cutting levels of the 1970s; there are trees everywhere; massive salvage logging is good for forest health; there is no biodiversity crisis; industrial loggers are exercising their individual property rights; clearcutting a forest is just like nature's way of forest change; biocentrists are political extremists who are attacking hard-working logger families.
Response
In chapter after chapter, Chase adopts the strategy of throwing barrages of bombs hoping that one or more will hit its' target. Where to begin? As a forest activist, social observer of many of the events and meetings Chase describes in this book, a student of social change, and a supporter of the deep, long-range ecology movement, I find Chase's narrative misleading at best and perverse at worst.
Chase ignores writings by philosophers who are supporters of the deep, long-range ecology movement. Having dismissed Arne Naess as a philosopher who is reviving German metaphysics, he doesn't even comment on Naess' many books and articles on the shallow and deep, long-range ecology movements nor on the "platform" of the deep, long-range ecology movement.
Chase dismisses biocentrism without even giving his readers a clear definition of biocentrism. Chase asserts that biocentrism is just another name for preservationism. Not so. Max Oelschlaeger in his much more scholarly and thorough book, The Idea of Wilderness, clearly distinguishes between preservationism and ecocentrism. "Ecocentrists believe that natural systems are the basis of all organic existence, and therefore possess intrinsic value, humankind is an element within rather than the reason to be of natural systems, and is hence dependent upon intrinsic value, ethical human actions (actions which promote the good life for humankind) necessarily promote all life on earth (preserves such intrinsic values as diversity, stability, and beauty.)" (p. 294)
On Holism
Arne Naess' intuition, and that of many supporters of the deep, long-range ecology movement, is that single individuals have intrinsic value. The importance of a species is immeasurably greater than that of an individual. However the idea of intrinsic value is categorically different from importance. Naess doubts that an ecosystem can have intrinsic value.
In my own books, not cited or discussed by Chase, I discuss the importance of developing ethical relations with individual bears, mountain lions, and other top predators in our own neighborhood (especially in "Dwelling in Mixed Communities" in Simple in Means, Rich in Ends). In my interviews with forest ecologists and many supporters of the deep, long-range ecology movement, I find they take a mild holism approach rather than a hard holism approach. In the current political situation in the United States, mild holism's emphasis on communal responsibilities and on community stability is a balance to the excessive egoism and individualism that pervades political discussions. Many social libertarians in the United States assert that even the mildest form of government regulation of excessive logging, destructive road-building on unstable slopes, destructive land use practices that lead to water pollution problems for downstream users, and protection of productive wetlands is "fascism."
On Class Warfare
Chase does not even mention the imperatives of capitalism and the political and economic power of international logging corporations. The impact of massive clearcutting by these corporations on the landscape of the Pacific Northwest is displayed in our book Clearcut: The Tragedy of Industrial Forestry (San Francisco, Sierra Club Books, 1994). The difference between a clearcut and a forest fire or other natural event, is that nature never built massive networks of logging roads and removed all the biomass from a forest to be transported to a lumber mill.
Corporations are primary actors in the battle over forests of the Pacific Northwest. Discounting the future at ever more rapid rates, corporate capitalism has accelerated logging during the past half century. There is no evidence that industrial forestry can ever grow an old-growth forest, and especially no evidence that industrial foresters will ever grow two hundred to a thousand year old redwood trees. Chase claims there is no consensus on a definition of old-growth forest, but by any definition, old-growth redwoods are not a renewable resource.
On Social Policy Concerning Forest Dynamics
Chase makes no mention of the intensive discussions among forest activists on developing social policy that accounts for naturally occurring changes in forests at the stand level and landscape level of analysis. The International Journal of Ecoforestry, for example, has published numerous articles on the role of fire and disturbance in forest systems. Intellectuals, scientists, and activists in the deep, long-range ecology movement are well aware that forests are dynamic systems. The ecoforestry approach to forests and the conservation biology approach, taken by the The Wildlands Project, both explicitly recognize the importance of natural disturbance. Ecologists working with The Wildlands Project explicitly propose planning for large core wildlands reserves that will allow for maximum natural disturbance be it fire, flood, or drought for example. Chase's chapter on the Wildlands Project (Chapter 26) is so superficial that the reader has no sense of the extensive development of regional wildlands projects currently underway nor the theoretical grounding of The Wildlands Project. Chase commits a fallacy of slippery slope that any schoolboy would be chastised for committing when he says "In addition to entailing perhaps the forced relocation of tens of millions of people, the project risked ecological calamity as well." (p. 356) For a thorough statement of philosophy and current program of The Wildlands Project, readers can obtain Wild Earth, "The First Thousand Days of the Next Thousand Years," (Winter, 1996).
Having refused to discuss various philosophies of Nature and natureÑas the Tao, as that which is, as Buddha, and having rejected nature as having intrinsic value, and having rejected the view that forests have a life beyond human comprehension, Chase is left with the post-modern position that nature is only a social construction. Since, to Chase, ecology is not a "true" science, there is no way for ecologists or supporters of the deep, long-range ecology movement, to rationally respond to Chase. He puts us in a true double bind, a kind of evil that can never be forgiven. He introduces Kuhn's theory of paradigm changes in science, but then asserts that while the Copernican paradigm change revealed true, objective attributes of nature, biocentrism is only a change in our perception of nature. (p. 260) Chase thus sets himself up as an arbitrator of truth, in contradiction to the Kantian view that he asserts is the basis of his criticism of ecology.
My Spiritual Journey
Chase uses his interpretation of my spiritual journey as a central pathway in the birth of biocentrism in the forests of the Pacific northwest. Chase sees my spiritual journey as fundamentally flawed. (Chapter 10)
Chase has never walked with me into the dark woods, or in the massive clearcuts, or along the streams and seashores of the Pacific northwest. He has never sat with me in zazen nor attempted to interview me on my perspective on my own spiritual journey. When a man makes such harsh statements about another man's spiritual path, he would be more compassionate by providing food for that man's spiritual growth. Chase does not provide any food, only poison.
I did come to California in 1968, but not, as Chase asserts, on a spiritual quest. I came to take a job at Humboldt State University in Arcata. When I arrived in Arcata, the old logging culture was still alive and active. The first Redwood National Park bill had just been signed by Lyndon Johnson, and the Sierra Club was considered a radical preservation group.
When I came to Humboldt county I was not an activist in the Sierra Club or any other conservation group, but when I saw my first truckload of ancient redwood rushing down highway 101 to the Arcata Redwood mill, I knew that something was wrong. I was outragedÑnot my sense of aesthetics, but the sense that too many ancient redwood forests had already been cut. The integrity of some watersheds should remain intact.
I was not a hippie, was not attracted to the drug culture or counterculture. I had no desire to stop logging. I only sensed that at least one intact watershed of ancient trees should remain beyond my lifetime. Why can't we stop cutting in just one watershedÑlower Redwood Creek? "We want jobs and money," was the answer from foresters, loggers, and many local intellectuals. That answer was not adequate to me then, and it is still not adequate for me now, two decades later after even more billions of board feet of timber have been removed from the forests of Humboldt County.
The narrow, economists' view of the forest as a "renewable natural resource", was inadequate to me. The economist's view provided no basis for ethics, no answer to the question of how humans should live in relation to the forest.
David Rains Wallace, writer and student of ecology, calls northwestern California and southern Oregon, "the Klamath knot", where theories of ecology lead to more questions than they answer. In this region the science of ecology helps explore the mysteries of the place but does not fully explain this place. My sense of place, my growing awareness of this place, I discovered, evoked in me an erotic, pansexual pantheism. As I was drawn deeper into the mystery of the forest, ever deeper questions about change and impermanence arose in my mind.
Chase, in his account of my personal spiritual journey, ignores my interest in Buddhism, especially in zen. Buddhism teaches impermanence. Life changes. Chase never mentions the parallels between Buddhist teachings and contemporary systems theory, discussed, for example, in the extensive writing of one of my teachers, Joanne Macy (World as Lover, World as Self.)
In our mountains and rivers sessions, our Arcata zen group has walked, in meditation, the rapidly changing coastline of the Lost Coast, in southern Humboldt county, near where three great geologic plates convergeÑa landscape of immense storms, earthquakes, fires, and floods. Natural change is part of our consciousness. The upwelling along the shore brings into our awareness a sense of connection to the great forces of nature that continue to shape the landscape, climate, and the meaning of our lives in the mystery of this place.
My spiritual journey has taken many twists and turns, but none of them are recognizable to me in reading Chase's account of the coming of the deep, long-range ecology movement to this small part of California. Chase never mentions sense of place in his diatribe against biocentrism. He never discusses the subtexts and sensibilities of this place of many rivers and mountain ranges emerging over millions of years from convergence of geologic forces in the "Klamath knot."
The Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement
Chase blames the "tragedy" of the political struggles over Pacific northwest forests on the "misguided" philosophy of "biocentrism." A more accurate "ultimate norm" for the deep, long-range ecology movement is "ecocentrism." Ecocentrism does represent a paradigm shift in culture away from humans as the center of the cosmos to humans as a part of the cosmos, not lord and master but, as Aldo Leopold says, "plain citizens."
Chase mentions that philosophers in the deep, long-range ecology movement are interested in ecosophy, not only in ecology. However Chase never presents any comments on the deep, long-range ecology movement as a search for ecosophy. Ecosophy is the search for wisdom. Alan Drengson, a philosopher and editor of The Trumpeter, provides an eloquent statement of ecosophy as a search for wisdom arising from place.
"Ecosophy is wisdom which arises from a place and resides in it, and it is also the wisdom to dwell harmoniously in the place. While ecosophy arises within a particular place, by showing us all of a place, it opens to unlimited space, and is global, universal and expansive. It deepens and evolves as a free creative presence in which multitudes of beings participate. It can be reached by way of the narrative and other trails. Ecosophy is ecological wisdom and harmony involving comprehensive, compassionate appreciation for Nature with Its myriad communities of beings. As compassion it is a wise sensibility that is harmonious in ecos with others. Ecosophy is ecological wisdom, pursued and realized through the practice of disciplines, which bring harmony and understanding into our ecological relationships..." ("Ecosophy Seen From the Narrative Trail")
Redwood Summer
Redwood Summer was a series of protests, demonstrations, and public education held in northwestern California in 1990. These events were part of a larger process of cultural reconstruction. After a century of domination by industrial logging corporations, grassroots citizen groups in northwestern California began a process of reclaiming forests based on the ancient doctrine of public trustÑthe state has responsibility for air, water, wildlife and wildlife habitat for the intrinsic value of the forests and for the values forests provide for present and future generations of humans.
Chase denounces the Forests Forever initiative, the 1990 citizen written ballot initiative that set about to redress the excesses of industrial logging practices. Against the overwhelming opposition of Big Logging Corporations, including over $7 million spent by Big Logging to defeat the initiative, it received over 48% of the vote, more than any other environmental or Big Logging Corporation initiative on the 1990 ballot. The campaign for the Forests Forever initiative brought to public attention the gross logging practices of Big Logging corporations. Industrial forestry engages in massive clearcutting and transformation of native forests into tree plantations. Corporate strategy focuses on maintaining high, short term profits in changing market situations. These practices negatively impact community stability, the fishing industry, wildlife habitat, and air and water quality. Many forest activists, in 1990, concluded that existing rules of the Board of Forestry under the California Forestry Act, were inadequate. Indeed, many concluded that the rules were written to foster the interests of large logging corporations.
Headwaters Forest
Chase presents the battle over Headwaters forest and lands controlled by Charles Hurwitz's Maxxam Corporation in Humboldt county as a prime example of misguided preservation versus wise use of redwood forests. Again Chase has it all wrong. Earth First! and the Environmental Protection and Information Center presented to Congress comprehensive proposals for restoration of over 44,000 acres of mostly clearcut lands and watersheds. These proposals included worker retraining, restoration work, long range community stability and protection of habitat for northern spotted owls, Marbled Murrelets and other creatures. By a large, bipartisan vote, the House in the 103rd Congress approved an act introduced by Congressman Dan Hamburg incorporating many of these features.
David Harris, in his book The Last Stand; The War Between Wall Street and Main Street over California's Ancient Forest (Times Books, 1995), concludes the big winner in the battle over Headwaters forest in Humboldt county is Houston based financier Charles Hurwitz. Chase and environmentalists can agree on that assessment. Chase never presents an alternative to Hurwitz's strategy of looting the forests ("I believe in the golden rule. Those who have the gold, rule," Chase quotes Hurwitz as saying after he acquired Pacific Lumber Company using junk bonds). The environmentalists did present democratic alternatives including support for worker ownership of Pacific Lumber Company through an Employee Stock Option Plan, workers cooperatives, government investment in restoration, and a debt for nature swap involving massive debts Hurwitz owes the federal government from defaulting on a savings and loan corporation he controlled in Houston.
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 1997
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited