If the foregoing analysis is correct and the environmentalist cause has been impeded by the executive arm of the state acting in tandem with the large corporations, while workers and endangered species are being forced to bear the main costs of the crisis, it would seem to be eminently sensible for environmentalists and workers to join forces around a common platform. A progressive class-oriented response to the old-growth crisis would have to focus on an ecological conversion program that can be enacted at the level of the state. As Victor Wallis has argued, the term conversion has traditionally referred to the switch from a military to a civilian economy but can be applied more broadly to the socially planned redirection of the economy necessary to create a sustainable society.[30]
There is no doubt that an ecological conversion strategy of this sort could be adopted in relation to the old-growth forest crisis. Moreover, there are progressive, ecologically concerned voices within the worker's movement who would back such a strategy. This is illustrated by the position taken by William Street, a progressive policy analyst for the International Woodworkers of America (IWA). Writing in May 1990 in his column in the IWA's paper, The Woodworker, Street explains:
We know a worker's forest policy ... starts by recognizing the need for a sustainable and renewable forestry. It recognizes that each portion of the planet must produce its proportional share of the resources it uses. The proportion should be produced as environmentally sound as possible.... A worker's forest policy would harvest at a sustainable rate and ensure that those mature trees that are harvested are used for those socially desired products for which there are no substitutes. By thus restricting the use of older trees harvest pressure would be diminished without contributing to unemployment.[31]
This position, taken by a progressive figure within a major forest product union, does not represent a solution to the tragedy of the ancient forest since it does not fully take into account the fragility of the remaining old-growth forest. Yet it represents a view that includes ecological and social components that are crucial to any attempt both to save the forest and safeguard the livelihoods of workers. It constitutes a viewpoint, moreover, that is a far cry from those that single-issue environmentalists almost invariably attribute to workers.
One thing that Street's "worker's forest policy" makes clear is that once the narrow profit-making goals of corporations are no longer seen as the primary constraint in working out solutions to problems of the environment and employment, all sorts of new rational possibilities open up, allowing for the development of common ground between workers and environmentalists. Clearcutting could conceivably be replaced by the "new forestry" techniques promoted by ecologist Jerry Franklin, in which the aim is to mimic natural processes by leaving behind large standing trees, snags, and fallen trees. Restrictions could be placed on the uses to which mature timber could be putso that old-growth could not be logged and then pulped to be converted into products like disposable diapers. Highgrading or the selective cutting of the oldest and most valuable timber alone could be prohibited. The use of herbicides and the burning of slash could be eliminated. Current bans on federal log exports could be followed up by bans (or export duties) on private log exports. Early retirement programs could be designed for older workers in the industry, coupled with guaranteed annual employment programs for those in the smaller workforce that remains. Larger shares of forest revenues could be returned to local communities. A Civilian Conservation Corps could be established to construct recreation facilities and carry out ecological restoration projects in the forests. Roads could be reclaimed in habitat conservation areas. Conversion funds could be provided to convert old-growth sawmills into more modern plants equipped to process second growth. A windfall profits tax could be placed on timber corporations that see the value of the timber on their tree plantations rise as a result of curtailments of public timber supplies. Extensive education and retraining programs (a workers' GI bill) could be established for displaced forest product workers. Economic development grants and loans could be made available to distressed communities. Federal programs could be developed to help manage timber more effectively on nonindustrial private forest lands. Current federal timber contract practices could be altered to ensure that timber would be sold at its full value and to decrease speculative purchases. Federal subsidies to timber capital through road-building budgets could be sharply curtailed and the freed up funds redirected to social services in timber communities. Funds could be allocated for the expansion of national forest lands to be managed on a nonprofit, ecologically sustainable basis, with revenue from the land base being used to support working communities. Finally, international agreements could be promoted to establish uniform practices of sustainable forestry and to reduce global competitive pressures that encourage deforestation and forest fragmentation.
What is important to recognize is that only a few relatively minor steps in this general direction would go a long way toward solving the employment problem and the community instability caused by the "set asides" for the protection of the northern spotted owl. A unified labor-environmentalist strategy that would meet the needs of both the forest ecosystem and forest communities is therefore perfectly feasible. What is necessary to make this possible is for society to invest some of its economic surplus in assisting workers whose jobs and communities are being undermined by new ecological requirements.
Unfortunately, people such as William Street are somewhat isolated within union circles and organized labor in the Northwest has thus far been reluctant to put its full weight behind ecological conversion (or industrial transition) programs when limited efforts have been made in this direction, since this is seen as an unnecessary concession to preservationists who wish to reduce logging levels. Matters are made worse by the fact that the major environmental organizations have shown little direct concern for the plight of the workers and have only recently begun to think in a rather modest fashion about industrial transition. Under these circumstances, it is perhaps not surprising that the labor unions themselves have been overshadowed in this area by conservative coalitions that are unabashedly anti-preservationist and pro-capital. Thus when the God Squad announced in May 1992 that it would exempt thirteen BLM sales from the Endangered Species Act, a representative of the Oregon Lands Coalition was quoted as saying: "This decision is a victory for the workers of Oregon, however small it may be." What is noteworthy about this statement is not so much the position taken as the fact that a conservative, pro-business, and anti-environmentalist citizens' alliance such as the OLC, which includes groups like cattle grazers and realtors as well as non-union workers' organizations such as the Yellow Ribbon Coalition should becomein the absence of a progressive trade union response to the crisisthe main voice for the "workers of Oregon" on the old-growth question.
This failure of the regional unions to push hard for an ecological conversion program is partly explained by the fact that such a program is an extremely difficult strategy for unions in a natural resource industry in an out-of-the way area of the country to pursue on their ownparticularly under circumstances of a declining natural resource base, economic depression, capital relocation, union decline, and growing environmental controls. Ultimately, the pursuit of an ecological conversion strategy requires not so much imaginative initiatives in a depressed community as coordinated action on a national scale, and this involves finding the means to force the channeling of surplus into ecological conversion programs throughout the country. That sufficient surplus for this purpose exists can scarcely be doubted.[32]
Recognizing this, the Oil Chemical and Atomic Workers Union has proposed the creation of a "Superfund for Workers" that would offer up to four years of support to people displaced by environmentally destructive industries in order to enable them to pursue vocational retraining, or even an entire career shift by means of extended education. Other possible variations on this Workers' Superfund program include assistance to help form small businesses and income supplements for individuals who decide to pursue less well paid work. The annual cost for a million workers might be $40 billion.[33]
The actual trend in the United States in recent years, however, has been in the opposite direction: toward less and less support for displaced workers. Federal outlays for worker retraining are only one-half what they were when Reagan was first elected. Under these circumstances, workers end up carrying a larger and larger share of the total costs of industrial transition. In 1987, public spending on employment and retraining as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was 1.7 percent in Sweden, 1 percent in West Germany, 0.7 percent in France, Spain, and Britain, and a minuscule 0.3 percent in the United States.[34]
This situation is a problem not only for workers and trade unions but for any environmental movement worthy of its name. Capitalism as a system devoted to accumulation without end is inseparable from a capital-intensive, energy-intensive economyand thus necessitates growing throughputs of raw materials and energy, along with the creation of excess capacity, surplus labor, and economic and ecological waste. This should be differentiated from the basic needs of the broad majority of people, which have to do with the availability of steady and worthwhile employment and an improving quality of life, and therefore have no inherent link to an intensive process of ecological degradation. Northwest timber workers, for their part, want above all to protect their livelihoods and communities. In this respect the export of unprocessed logs, the relentless drive for ever higher levels of automation, the stress on clearcutting as opposed to "new forestry," the use of chemical weed killers, the burning of slash, and so on, make no sense from a workers' standpoint.
The "job blackmail" that often seems to compel workers to adopt an anti-environmental stance can therefore be seen to be tied to a system that promotes profits by means of the exploitation of both human beings and nature.[35] The direct route to the creation of a mass environmental movement is one that seeks to break the seemingly intractable conflict between jobs and environmental protection (a conflict symbolized nowadays by owls vs. jobs) by placing ecological conversionthe planning of new ways of working with nature while fulfilling social needsat the very core of each and every ecological struggle. This necessarily means moving away from the attitude that environmentalism can somehow stand above and beyond the class struggle.
A shift toward a broad movement for ecological conversion and the creation of a sustainable society also means that the partnership between the state and the capitalist class, which has always formed the most important linchpin of the capitalist system, must be loosened by degrees, as part of an overall social and environmental revolution. This partnership must be replaced, in the process of a radical transformation of the society, by a new partnership between democratized state power and popular power.[36] Such a shift requires revolutionary change that must be more than simply a rejection of capitalist methods of accumulation and their effects on people and the environment. Socialismas a positive, not just a negative, alternative to capitalismremains essential to any conversion process, because its broad commitment to worldwide egalitarian change reflects an understanding of "how the needs of the various communities can fit together in a way that leaves nobody out, but that also satisfies the environmental requirements that are global. Within a socialist framework, the sources of the largest scale and most severe environmental destruction could be dealt with head-on, in a way that has already shown itself to be beyond the capacitynot to say against the interestsof capital."[37]
From an eco-socialist perspective there is no difficulty in seeing that the rapid destruction of the old-growth forest is not about owls vs. jobs but ecosystems vs. profits. Ecology tells us that the destruction of a complex ecosystem rooted in a climax forest that took a millennium or more to develop involves thresholds beyond which ecological restoration is impossible. We must therefore find our way to a more rational economic and social formation, one that is not based on the amassing of wealth at the expense of humanity and nature but on justice and sustainability. Whether the issue is species extinction, death on the job, women's control of their own bodies, the dumping of toxic wastes in minority communities, urban decay, third world poverty, the destruction of the ozone layer, global warming, nuclear contamination, desertification, soil erosion, or the pollution of water resources, the broad questions and answers remain the same. As the authors of Europe's Green Alternative have written, we must choose between two logics: "On the one side, economics divorced from all other considerations, and on the other life and society."[38]
[30] Wallis, "Socialism, Ecology, and Democracy" Monthly Review 44, no.2 (June 1992) pp. 15-18. See also Raymond Williams, "Socialism and Ecology" in Resources of Hope (London: Verso, 1989).
[31] William Street, "Ecology Is Not a Four Letter Word," The Woodworker, 20 May 1990.
[32] See Michael Dawson and John Bellamy Foster, "The Tendency of the Surplus to Rise, 1963-1988," in John B. Davis, ea., The Economic Surplus in the Advanced Economies (Brookfield, VT: Edward Elgar, 1992), pp. 42-70. An abbreviated version of this research appeared under the same title in Monthly Review 43, no. 4 (September 1991): 37- 50.
[33] Renner, "Creating Sustainable Jobs," pp.153-54.
[34] Ibid.
[35] Ibid., p. 139.
[36] Miliband, Divided Societies, pp. 228-29, 233.
[37] Walls, op. cit., pp. 16-17
[38] Penny Kemp et. al., Europe's Green Alternative: A Manifesto for a New World (London: Merlin Press, 1992), p 16
