Several times a month, I look out my windows in the early morning and see a bright red tugboat marking time in the bay below me.

It has spent the night here, tethered to a raft of floating logs—surely more than a thousand mature Douglas fir trees, freshly taken from the forests of the Olympic Mountains.

Now I do believe in controlled, sustainable harvest of forests with replanting in mixed species to maintain bio-diversity. I do not support clear cutting, which leaves a scarred, ugly terrain subject to erosion and landslides. But these logs are on their way from Port Angeles, Washington to Tacoma, and then onto a freighter bound for Asia. (I am acquainted with a local tugboat captain, which is how I know this.)

When I think of the carbon footprint of this lumber I shudder:
• the energy it took to plant and tend these trees for decades
• the energy to fell them and transport them to the first port
• then dragging them through the inland sea to another port
• followed by a trans-Pacific cruise to Asia
• finally, they will be off-loaded there and trucked to mills where these trees will become some sort of lumber to supply the rapidly growing cities of China and Japan
• in a worst-case scenario, they might even become furniture or other wood products that are shipped back here

All while mills throughout North America are closing left and right. The use of paper is a direct contributor to the decline of the environment due to the wanton destruction of our forests.

• Paper is the number one material that is thrown away.
• For every 100 pounds of trash we throw away, 35 pounds is paper.
• Paper fills up 30-40% of American landfill space.
• As paper decomposes in landfills or is burned in incinerators, chemicals from its inks are released into the environment.
• Deforestation is occurring at an alarming rate worldwide, particularly in tropical regions. The World Resources Institute estimated in 1997 that only a fifth of the world’s old-growth forests were undamaged, and almost half of these faced immediate threats from logging and development.
• Americans use more than 50 million tons of paper each year, consuming more than 850 million trees.

contemplations

• What are you doing to conserve resources?
• Do you cultivate a spiritual connection to trees?
• Can you buy local more often?