Lawmakers Want To Crack Down On Logging Protests

Citing 'environmental terrorism,' Oregon House passes bills targeting tree-sitters, environmental activists

Lawmakers Want To Crack Down On Logging Protests

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By Yuxing Zheng, The Oregonian 
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on April 29, 2013 at 6:42 PM, updated April 29, 2013 at 6:48 PM

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View full sizeEnvironmental activists previously staged sit-ins, road blockades and protests at Elliott State Forest. Two bills passed in the Oregon House Monday target tree sitters and others who interfere with state forestland management.Thomas Boyd/The Oregonian

SALEM -- With talk about "environmental terrorism," the Oregon House approved two bills Tuesday that target tree sitters and other environmental activists who interfere with logging in state forests.

House Bill 2595, which passed 51-4, would create the crime of interference with state forestland management.House Bill 2596, which passed 43-12, would allow private contractors with the Oregon Department of Forestry to sue environmental protestors for the cost of damaged equipment, employee wages, attorney fees and similar costs. Both bills head to the Senate.

The legislation comes amid divisive efforts to increase logging in Elliott State Forest near Reedsport and proposals to increase logging in federal forest lands. Environmental activists affiliated with Cascadia Forest Defenders and Cascadia Earth First! staged protests at Elliott State Forest in recent years and at the Oregon State Capitol in May and June 2012, which led to arrests.

"They are known to overturn their vehicles on roads, chain themselves to trees, chain themselves to equipment, damage equipment, dig ditches in the roads, drive spikes in trees to cause injuries to workers, among other dangerous acts," said Rep. Wayne Krieger, R-Gold Beach, who carried both bills. "This type of conduct cannot and should not be tolerated."

House Bill 2595 would allow district attorneys "to charge these terrorists with a crime and make them accountable," he said.

View full sizeEnvironmental protestors in June 2012 locked themselves together and refused to leave the offices of Secretary of State Kate Brown and Treasurer Ted Wheeler in the Oregon State Capitol. State police arrested six protestors.Oregon State Police

Krieger also cited protests at a State Land Board meeting in 2011 and sit-ins in the offices of Secretary of State Kate Brown and Treasurer Ted Wheeler in June 2012, when protestors locked themselves together. One protestor also urinated on the carpet in the offices of the treasurer, and protestors howled and made animal noises, Wheeler's spokesman said. State police arrested six protestors.

The bills passed despiteconcerns from environmental activists and the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregonthat they would infringe upon free speech rights of environmental protestors. Activists can already be prosecuted for disorderly conduct, trespass, property damage and criminal mischief, said Becky Straus, legislative director of ACLU of Oregon.

"House Bill 2595 is effectively criminalizing civil disobedience for one particular group, and we think it's really very dangerous to give this sort of discretion to law enforcement," Straus said. "It's taking conduct that can already be penalized under our criminal code and heightening the criminal penalties of the conduct, simply because of the content of the speech and the type of person who engages in the conduct."

Defendants convicted of interfering with forestland management for the first time would face up to a year in jail, a $6,250 fine, or both. Subsequent convictions would net a minimum of 13 months in jail and a $25,000 fine. The maximum penalty would be 18 months in jail and a $125,000 fine.

If House Bill 2595 becomes law, environmental activists vow to challenge it in court.
"I can assure you that as soon as this bill becomes law, we'll have as many people arrested and prosecuted under it as possible," said Jason Gonzales, a spokesman with Cascadia Forest Defenders. "There's no law that can stop somebody from acting on something they passionately believe in. There's not some level of punishment that will make us not want to do that."

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Cascadia Forest Defenders has staged road blockades, tree sits and protests in Elliott State Forest in recent years. The group is opposed to an October 2011 decision to increase logging in the forest. Three environmental groups in May 2012 filed a lawsuit that said logging would threaten the marbled murrelet, a threatened sea bird.

Jim Geisinger, executive vice president of Associated Oregon Loggers, welcomed the passage of the two bills Monday. Although contractors can already sue for damages, current law is "a little vague and nebulous," he said.

"When protestors or obstructionist activities in the forest cause a contractor to go home, and they're unable to perform their duties, that costs money," he said. "The value of these bills is to put people on notice that there are consequences to their illegal actions."
-- Yuxing Zheng

The coal boom: Burning ambitions What is good news for miners is bad news for the environment

IN RICH countries, where people worry about air quality and debate ways of pricing carbon emissions, coal is deeply unfashionable. Elsewhere demand for the dirty rocks has never been stronger. The International Energy Agency (IEA) reckons world consumption will increase by a fifth over the next 25 years, assuming governments stick to their current climate-change policies. A new age of coal is upon us.

The IEA estimates that China, which generates more than 70% of its electricity with coal, will build 600 gigawatts (GW) of coal-fired power capacity in the next quarter-century—as much as is currently generated with coal in America, Japan and the European Union put together. Nomura, a Japanese bank, thinks that may be an underestimate. It reckons China will add some 500GW of coal-fired power by as early as 2015, and will more than double its current generating capacity by 2020. It expects Indian coal-fired power generation to grow too—though more slowly.

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Even developing countries with vast quantities of coal under home soil will find themselves unable to dig it out quickly enough to meet demand. China, the world’s biggest coal producer by some distance, has turned to foreign suppliers over the past couple of years and is likely to rely on them even more in future. Its voracious appetite for energy and steel means it will need at least 5-7% more coal each year. Citigroup reckons China will import 233m tonnes in 2011. As Daniel Brebner of Deutsche Bank points out, that is considerably more than the annual capacity of Richards Bay in South Africa or Newcastle in Australia, the world’s biggest coal ports.

Domestic supply has failed to keep up with demand for several reasons. China’s coal is located in the north and west of the country, far from the coastal cities where energy demand is growing strongly. And China’s mines are old. The coal is deep underground and expensive to extract. Congested railways and roads mean domestic deliveries can be less reliable and pricier than the imported sort. Production has also been hit by government attempts to close inefficient (and dangerous) smaller mines and encourage consolidation.

China’s efforts to improve coal supplies include the building of a new east-west passenger railway line, set to open in 2013, which should free existing tracks for coal transport. New high-speed and light railways across the country may alleviate bottlenecks further. But for the foreseeable future the country will depend on ships laden with foreign coal.

India is even less capable of increasing coal production. Much of its impressive reserves sit under protected forests or land set aside for ethnic minorities. The country’s creaking railways make it hard to move the stuff, as does the absence of a mechanism to negotiate bulk rail contracts. And Indian coal is generally of poor quality, which makes it unsuited to newer, more efficient, coal–fired power stations. India could become the world’s biggest thermal coal importer by 2015. It is already largely dependent on imports of coking coal, used to make steel.

All this is good news for the mining industry. Nomura reckons that thermal coal will hit a peak price of $170 a tonne in 2012 compared with $110 now. Asian firms will benefit most. Indonesia is now the biggest source of imports to China because of its proximity to the country and the high quality of its coal (see article). Indonesia has few proven reserves, but high prices may well spur further exploration. Mongolia, which is also handily close to China, and Mozambique could join Australia, South Africa and Colombia as big exporters.

The coal boom has spurred a sackful of deals. The industry produced a record number of mergers and acquisitions last year, with a value of $52 billion, according to Dealogic, a financial-information firm. Rio Tinto, a global mining giant, has offered A$3.9 billion for Riversdale, which has mines in Mozambique. Chinese state-backed firms are also investing abroad. Yanzhou’s $3.5 billion purchase of Australia’s Felix Resources in 2009 is the biggest such deal so far.

Two potential giants may yet weigh in. America, the world’s second-biggest coal producer after China, has mammoth reserves and a power industry that is turning against coal (currently responsible for almost half of domestic electricity generation). Environmental regulations and cheap shale gas will leave miners looking for new markets overseas. Russia, with vast coal reserves thousands of miles from the nearest port, might yet build the infrastructure needed to send its coal to the world market.

This boon for miners bodes ill for the environment. The power stations frantically being built in China to feed the country’s new electricity grid will be relatively efficient and thus less polluting than older coal plants around the world. But that is a rather low bar. Coal is the filthiest fossil fuel and is cheap only because its dirtiness isn’t included in the bill.

Indeed, the coal boom blows yet another hole in the effort to restrain greenhouse-gas emissions. The Kyoto protocol makes countries responsible only for their own direct emissions. As environmentalists point out, rich countries that spurn coal-fired power while exporting the rocks to countries with less ambitious emissions targets are merely shifting the problem around the globe. Even China’s modest hopes of bringing its share of coal-fired power down to 63% by 2015 sit ill with its growing dependence on coal. Alongside coal-fired power stations and coal exports, a coal conundrum is growing.

Suggested by Linc Cannon, OFIC

Bob Ragon Op-Ed for the Roseburg News Review 2010

2010 began with most economic forecasters optimistically predicting a 35 % improvement in housing starts. Unfortunately new home construction results were disappointing and dominated by foreclosures and challenging credit markets.

Several world events significantly impacted our timber industry. First was the massive earthquake in February crippling Chile's plywood exports to the United States. As a result panel prices in the US skyrocketed from an average price of $260/Msf to a high of $460/Msf in early May. The beneficiaries were our plywood mills, principally Roseburg Forest Products and the Swanson Group. The run-up in prices was a temporary shot in the arm, but unfortunately the market retreated quickly when Chile resumed exporting plywood in late May.

The second major world event affecting our industry was the entry of China into our forest products market this summer. Russia imposed a 25% tariff on logs exported from Siberia to Chinese sawmills and now lumber and logs from the northwest are in high demand to satisfy China's expanding economy. This is a two edged sword for our industry by improving the overall lumber market but also driving up log costs to our local mills.

Finally Douglas County is now on the Secretary of Interior's radar screen for relief from the gridlock that has brought timber sales from the BLM in southwest Oregon to a virtual standstill. Secretary Salazar convened a one day roundtable discussion in Roseburg in October with a followup meeting in Washington DC in December. Several of our industry leaders including Allyn Ford and Steve Swanson participated as well as County Commissioner Doug Robertson. The lack of federal timber availability remains a key impediment to jobs and county revenues in Douglas County and all of rural Oregon.