In your opinion, is the demise of print newspaper good for the environment?

[jayman]

Originally Posted by icarus

Where I live part of the year in Northern Ontario, Canada, almost all the mills are idle/closed/mothballed or at the very least, running skeleton shifts. This in an area of 1000 kms, from Kenora Ont on the west to White River Ont on the east,,, (I'm sure it is just as bad in Quebec and the east!) There are mill towns that are drying up and blowing away in the face of the meltdown. Not just the millworkers, but the bush workers who cut, process, haul the trees, and the legions that do forest management , tree planting, repair and maintenence of machinces etc are ALL suffering.

All these people are waiting for the day when these jobs are going to come back,,,sadly uninformed as to why their lives will never be the same.

While I empathize with the people involved, I recognize that the environment is the winner. For too long, too much fibre has been harvested for the sake of "jobs" with little regard for the true and real environmental cost(s). We had a 50 year boom of forest product employment, during which time the north was warrened with thousands of KMs of logging roads that served to bring this timber to market regardless of it's cost. Those days are thankfully over.

I'm familiar with that area. May I respectfully caution you *not* to display those sentiments while actually IN that area? Those simple union folk may not take too kindly to your words

[icarus]

Originally Posted by jayman

I'm familiar with that area. May I respectfully caution you *not* to display those sentiments while actually IN that area? Those simple union folk may not take too kindly to your words

Jay,

I have to take exception to your reference to "simple union folk" as though they are stupid, back woods yokels. In fact they are hard working people who have, on balance been sold a bill of goods over the years. The fault indeed lies in part with the workers,, but more, much more blame should land at the feet of the political infrastructure that has allowed bad forest practices to not only continue,, but to grow. That is where the votes are. (were?) The fault also lies with the moneyed classes, (corporate business etc) whose motivation was to extract maximum profit out of the bush as fast as possible regardless of the long term consequence.

It it far too easy to point fingers of blame,, and refuse to understand that we all have culpability. Problems do not grow in vacuums, nor do solutions. To blame the union (or non union) tree faller, timber hauler, millworker, and give Abatibi, Bowater, Georgia Pacific, Buchannan, Domtar, Boise Cascade etc a pass is disingenuous at best.

It is not unlike the reaction of too many,,, blaming the UAW for the problems of GM. I think there is plenty of blame to go around,,,
and then some.

Icarus

[jayman]

Originally Posted by icarus

I have to take exception to your reference to "simple union folk" as though they are stupid, back woods yokels.

Some days, my humor really doesn't get across. I should have phrased it like this:

[Sarcasm Mode = ON] simple union folk [Sarcasm Mode = OFF]

I completely agree with your reply, the forestry workers have been screwed blue without lube, along with everybody who lives in that area.

They've also been brainwashed too.

Hence my little caution. If you were to mosey into a cafe and casually mention something along the lines like, for example, "well, too bad the mill closed its doors and screwed everybody out of a severance package, but at least the environment will be the winner in all of this" you'd get the s*** beat out of you

I'm familiar with that area, especially the area you have your second home (To protect your privacy I won't go into that), and can quite honestly state that anybody who is perceived to be a "green" or an "environmentalist" is absolutely not welcome in those communities

Example, this mill wants permission to remove the scrubbers, and apparently most of the town folks support them!

Mill's bid to dump pollution control to be reviewed - Winnipeg Free Press

Odd how the same mill was bragging about this system

http://www.swanvalleyforest.ca/pdfs/...ss6_lowres.pdf

"Environmental Stewardship" what a crock of s***. They're probably giggling that they suckered the local folks into believing it too

Do I have sympathy for those folks? Of *course* I do! They put their trust in large corporations, and - horrors - the government, and got screwed. How about this nasty little surprise

Marathon Pulp Inc. closing for good - The Sault Star - Ontario, CA

So not only does the company dump all sorts of lovely chemicals into the environment, plunder the forest, they even screw the severance out of the workers. Nice!

[icarus]

Jay,

You have it about right,,, sad to say. What people don't get in this part of the world is that is is SO big, it is easily seen as limitless.

To those who don't know, the area we are talking about is huge,,, and it it empty of people. In a area that stretches from ~ Sault Ste. Marie to kenora is over 1000 miles, and is anywhere from 200-500 miles wide, say 300,000 sq miles Compare that to California ~155,000 sq miles. Take that area,, Put in the population of ~300,000 people, ~200,000 of which live in the 2 cities of Thunder Bay and Sault Ste. Marie, and you are left with ~100,000 scattered in a few small communities scattered along the railway or the Trans Canada Highway and you can begin to see how big it really is. From the Sault to Kenora, you have the one industry (forest products) towns of White River, Marathon, Terrace Bay, Nipigon/Red Rock, Thunder Bay, Dryden Kenora, all spaced about 100 miles apart with little or no population in between. None bigger than 10k, most around 4k, all with a pulp mill, some with a saw mill. I have often driven the entire distance between any two of these towns and not encountered another vehicle,,, depending on the time of day/year.

So it is easy to see how these people have been forgotten, and how these people feel that their wood lands and jobs would be there forever. It it pretty easy to ignore 400,000 sq miles with fewer people than a good sized urban neighbourhood. Add in the vast distances and time require to traverse the "big empty" and you are not surprised.

Icarus

[tripp]

So why can't these people be re-employed in a biomass to energy economy? Probably it's not cost effective at this point, but if Canadia ends up in a global carbon cap 'n trade system, they may need to to offset the tar sands emissions.

[icarus]

There has been some talk about bio-mass energy projects,,, particularly to fuel 2 coal fired plants. The reality is that bio-mass energy is IMHO a long term loser, and in this case the transportation cost is prohibitive. In addition, fuel pellets are not nearly as labour intensive as sawmilling or paper making. (Not that these industries are very labour intense any more)! Also a cubic meter of firewood/pellet fuel has much smaller value than the same cubic meter as lumber/plywood or paper.

As the late Sam Kinnison said regarding famine victims in Africa, "These people don't need food,,,, they need luggage!"

In point of fact there are far too many people in the area for the bush to support. Like Newfoundland fishermen,,, they need to move on. No politician however would ever make that suggestion.

Icarus

[jayman]

Originally Posted by tripp

So why can't these people be re-employed in a biomass to energy economy?

You really have to take a drive through the area to understand the answer to that question.

For the most part, it's a tough and forbidding landscape of rough Canadian Shield, numerous small lakes, trees (No original growth that I'm aware of , mostly 3-4th cut now) and not much else. Outside of former industrial towns like the mining town of Atikokan, Armstrong (Grew when a USAF Pinetree Line radar base was there during the early cold war, that closed in the mid 70's), Sioux Lookout (Another USAF Pinetree Line radar base that closed in the mid 80's), Dryden (Pulp and paper town, mill went Tango Uniform Nov of 2008), Red Lake (Gold mine, on and off again operation), Kenora (Mill went Tango Uniform 2005), etc, it's pretty sparsely populated

For example, you can take the Trans Canada eastbound from Winnipeg to Dryden. Just before the Ontario border, it transitions from 4 lane to 2 lane. It's pretty empty, the only sign of habitation outside of Kenora is Vermillion Bay, just before Dryden.

At Dryden, you can take Hwy 502 south. This highway opened in the late 1970's, proving just how late "civilization" came to NW Ontario. Even cell phone coverage didn't come along until around 2003, and the vast majority of the area is no coverage at all

Hwy 502 is around 180 km from the Dryden turnoff to where it dead ends at Hwy 11. At the Hwy 11 junction, you can turn east towards Atikokan and Thunder Bay, or west towards Fort Frances. If you break down on 502, you might not see another vehicle for a *long* time.

In winter, if there is a blizzard and you get stuck on 502, you'd be in very deep s*** unless you had a satellite phone

Outside of on again off again minng (Always rumors of gold mines opening, which never seem to pan out), there is forestry and not much else. Although folks in that region are proud, they also are deeply uneasy over the harsh fact that once a kid graduates from high school, they have little choice but to move on to the outside world.

The population in that area is steadily decreasing, leaving behind a growing elderly cohort that require long-term care. Not a very good situation to be in

[jayman]

Originally Posted by icarus

In point of fact there are far too many people in the area for the bush to support. Like Newfoundland fishermen,,, they need to move on. No politician however would ever make that suggestion.

As a WAG, I'd say 20 times the population that could just be supported. Any politician that suggested they "move on" would be committing political suicide

Actually, for every person graduating from grade 12, it would be best to hand them a one way bus ticket good for anywhere in Canada, in addition to their worthless diploma. You'd be doing them a favor ...

[tripp]

I figured as much. I wouldn't say biomass is a loser necessarily. It may not be a big player in world energy markets, but I bet there will be smaller, niche markets where it can play an important role. Bio char plants can create electricity or oil as well as producing fertilizer and are, I believe, carbon negative, so there's some potential there.

[icarus]

If you want to add to the list of TU forest products mills,

Ainsworth sawmill in Barwick,, short shifts. Buchannan(nee Mathieu) Sawmill in Sapawi, shut down. Proboard OSB Mill Atikokan, closed. Northern wood, Thunderbay Closed. Ft. William Fine Paper, Thunder Bay closed. Abatibi Paper mill, Thunder Bay, shut down, Bowater Paper Thunder Bay,, (this mill was built in the 1920's , was owned by and supplied the Chicago Tribune with it's paper all these years!) Short shift,, intermittent shut down. Red Rock ply mill, closed, Nipigon Pulp mill,, shut down, Terrace Bay paper,, shut down, (after Buchannan looted several million to "save it"). Marathon Pulp mill,, closed.

Add to these the ones I don't know about in Long Lac, Hearst, Kapaskasing and the job losses are in the tens of thousands.

As for it's isolation,,, when I was growing up the Trans Canada was just complete across the North Shore of Lake Superior was just open. Hwy 11 was not even built between Thunder Bay and Ft. Frances, and none of the little feeder roads were not there, no to mention the miles of logging roads. We couldn't drive to our lakeshore until 1995.

I just drove from Thunder Bay to Ft. Frances on a saturday in March,,, I think I passed 1 car,, and less than 15 passed us in the other direction,,, this in ~400kms.

Icarus