Stone-dead and oily.

This strange title describes the raw materials that stoke our energy hunger and drive public laws and taxes that favor fuels over forests. It's time we stood up for changes. Here's how.

OFF SEWARD, ALASKA, LAST SEPTEMBER, our boat wallowed in steel-gray swells as we watched humpback whales blow their noses (well, that thing in the top of their head works like a nose). Our guides told us that soon the whales would swim about 2,500 miles to Hawaii. The mothers give birth to baby whales and nurse them there (all the while losing weight in the relatively food-sparse waters). Whales go south not for the food but for the warmer, whale-child-friendly environment.

Once the babies are big enough, the whales swim back to Alaska to bulk-up in food-rich Alaskan seas.

I caught myself thinking that there must be a better way to live than commuting 5,000 miles between the nursery and the kitchen. Then realized that I had just traveled almost that far in one day to look at whales!

Now, you may be wondering "Does this story relate to the focus of this series--trees and people?"

It relates.

Those of us living on the piece of the planet called America presently move whale-size amounts of material on whale-size trips every day. We are becoming the land-whales of the planet, but we roam farther and faster, and move the material we need (I'll call it stuff) from wherever it is to wherever we want it. The food in a meal today has traveled an average of 1,400 miles to get to our tables. Care to pick your teeth (discreetly) after the meal? You may do so with toothpicks from Maine or, just as likely, from Japan. We ship wood to Japan; they ship back mint-flavored toothpicks wrapped in paper.

In 140 years we have created a system that brings us whatever we want from wherever it is--most of it stone-dead and oily. We have changed our power base from grass-burner to gas-burner (animal power to cars and trucks). Power available per person has increased 467 times. (I'm talking horsepower here--one horsepower, the equivalent of 746 watts, is defined as the ability to move 550 pounds one foot in one second.) Our reach has multiplied about 40 times: We comfortably move ourselves and our stuff 1,000 miles or more in a day now compared to 25 miles in 1850.

In 1850 wood represented 67 percent of everything we used and was important for heating and cooking. Now 96 percent of everything we use is material other than wood. Total stuff used per person per year adds up to 45,000 pounds--three times as much as in 1850. Eighty percent of what we use is stone or oil, and primarily involves transportation. The 4 percent of our stuff that is wood is mostly lumber, plywood, and particleboard. Paper from wood accounts for only 1.3 percent of the materials we use, although we make this element seem bigger by discussing it incessantly.

There are 11 times more of us now than in 1850, so using three times more stuff per person per year combines to produce an effective increase of 33 times in total stuff used.

Stick with me here (you may have to read this twice). We have reduced our use of wood individually to one-fifth the levels of 1850, but total wood use has doubled because there are 11 times more of us now.

The lesson from this mass of math is that the increasing total numbers of people quickly negates savings from the decreasing per-capita use of raw material.

We are not going to "save" our way into more greenery as long as population growth outstrips savings. Also, saving won't cut it (to pun a little) if our new uses of resources and our public policies on land use and taxation continue to force land out of growing forests.

In no way do I mean to suggest that we shouldn't preserve natural areas and conserve and recycle wood products, including paper. I do suggest that saving forests from harvests and recycling forest products are not enough to ensure adequate, healthy forests that provide all the things we need from them.

Our conversion from grass-burner to gas-burner bought forests time by reducing the amount of land needed for crops, allowing us to let millions of acres of land cleared for cropland revert back to forests. Nature and time did most of the work. We assisted with fire protection and the planting of billions of trees. As a result, the amount of forest land in America has been quite stable since 1920.

We are very green today. But we are zoning, taxing, and regulating away the ability to hold land long-term for deliberately growing forests (working forests) for all their benefits. We are discriminating against working forests with policies similar to those that have moved so much manufacturing out of America to other countries.

WE HAVE PUT 180 million acres of forest into no-harvest protection through public purchase and legislation, and a considerable amount more will never see harvest because of location, public pressure, and regulation. These are areas of beauty, wilderness, wildlife preserves, and parks--wonderful things, and we need them, but it leaves us with less than 500 million acres of potential working forest. That's just about the amount we need at present population and wood-use levels if we want to maintain healthy, diverse forests and harvest gently, aesthetically, slowly, and sustainably.

Three forces are making careful long-term management of our remaining 500 million acres of potentially productive forests economically unrewarding, socially unacceptable, and legally difficult:

We are losing working forests near urban areas. As human populations expand, land that might produce forests is valued, taxed, zoned, and regulated toward what some consider to be higher values. Forested land near urban populations can exist economically only through public ownership for public amenities--or as "house with wooded lot."

We are losing working forests in remote areas. Our largely urban population (77 percent) wants forested natural areas and recreation in remote areas, to which they can travel to escape the city environment. They do not see management of working forests as compatible with their needs. This fact, combined with our ability to zip off 1,000 miles or more in a day, means that even land far from human populations is being eliminated as working forest.

Effects from the loss of working forests are masked. Though fewer American forests yield wood products, we see no or few shortages because forest products are so easily brought in from all over the world.

Our tax and public policy systems ensure enhancement of the vital ability to transport ourselves and our materials. They do not ensure enhancement of the vital ability to maintain land for biological and nonbiological resources; thus they do not ensure working forests. The American Farmland Trust found, in a study of community tax treatments in three northeastern states, that farm and forest taxes in effect subsidize commercial and residential uses of land. In the areas surveyed, for every $1 paid in taxes, commercial and residential owners received $1.15 in tax-supported services. Farm and forest owners received only 42 cents worth of tax-supported services for every $1 they paid in taxes.

Here are my thoughts on what we might do, collectively and individually, to reverse the stone-dead and oily preferences that have grown up around our 20th-century lifestyle:

PUBLIC POLICIES THAT WOULD ENHANCE THE ABILITY TO MAINTAIN WORKING FORESTS.

1) Slow population growth.

2) Maintain at least 500 million acres of well-cared-for working forests, especially near where most people are. Yes, we can create substitutes for the wood. Yes, we can reach farther for the wood we need. But are those good choices? When Congress wants to set aside another nifty few million acres here or there, some hard questions about choices and land-base maintenance should first be answered.

3) Give forestland and income from forest land the same tax status as individual retirement accounts (IRAs) used to have (generous deductions for putting money in; no taxes until money is taken out). 1 propose Green Investment Reinvestment Accounts (GIRAs) whereby new tax rules (presently only in my mind) would allow forest owners to invest pretax dollars in their forests for items such as forestry and other biological advisory services and various land and wildlife amelioration practices. We presently offer better tax breaks for hiring lawyers and accountants than we do for hiring foresters or biologists.

4) Give well-cared-for working forestland the same zoning and regulatory preferences as we presently give other key systems such as wetlands and wilderness.

5) Stop teaching people that wood fresh from a tree is an evil material to be discriminated against.

6) Examine the "stone-dead-and-oily" preferences we have built into public systems. Each car and truck, each gallon of gasoline pays taxes to build more systems for moving more cars, trucks, and petroleum products. Almost everything collected is spent to perpetuate our ability to move far and fast in an automotive mode, using stone-, metal-, or oil-based materials.

Compare this to what we do with taxes from green and growing things like forests. We tax forestland annually, even though forests are not annual crops. We tax income from forest harvests and other uses, and we spend those taxes on things having nothing to do with maintaining forests. Less than 5 percent of taxes collected from forests are used to enhance forests.

PERSONAL POLICIES THAT WOULD ENHANCE THE ABILITY TO MAINTAIN WORKING FORESTS:

1) Beat incessantly on put local, state, and federal representatives until they change our crazy anti-green tax system. Beat on them also to establish that working forests deserve as much public preference as wilderness and wetlands.

2) Stop hanging your head and mumbling when asked: "Paper or plastic?" If you bring along a carry bag or will be buying only a few things to tote, the answer is: neither. If paper better suits your purpose, ask for paper; if plastic works better, use plastic. Look the clerk in the eye, say what you want, and hold your head high.

3) Support recycling because it stretches resources and keeps waste out of land-fills, but understand (and explain to others) that once a tree is put into paper or other products, all the recycling in the world won't bring that tree back to life. Nor does it guarantee more trees will grow somewhere. We guarantee more trees will grow somewhere by making sure land is available for tree growing, along with the other necessary resources of time and knowledge.

4) Turn some of your money and time into support for organizations devoted to advancing the broad spectrum of forest use and maintenance. Be willing to listen to and support complex solutions that will take time and money over the long haul. Forests are long-term things. Forest organizations have to be long-term things as well.

5) Encourage debate and new ideas within your organizations, even ideas you may hate at first blush. They may be wrong; they may be right. You won't find out which until you carefully consider them.

Turn off the car radio as you drive on these long winter nights. Listen to the fossil fuel flowing through your car's engine and the tires humming on stone- and oil-based surfaces, and think about these things. I'll return to the subject of public policies and forest taxation in future articles.

The next time we meet, spring leaves will be coming out. We'll discuss reading tree leaves and plant personalities. Like people, plants have different operating styles. If you know what those are, you can put different styles together in better combinations to keep more of the green side up.

STUFF AMERICANS USE IN ONE YEAR

20,000 POUNDS of stone, sand, and gravel. There's a lot of it, but the supply is finite. We dig it up, mix it with other stuff, drive on it, and build with it.

16,000 POUNDS of fuels (basically finite--renewable over millions of years): mostly off and coal from plants and animals that died eons ago. We burn tots of fuel moving ourselves and our raw materials all over the world. Off and coal are also used for many products and chemicals.

2,000 POUNDS of drinking water--finite, recycled in natural systems or with our help.

2,000 POUNDS of food--growable/renewable.

2,000 POUNDS of minerals--finite supply.

2,000 POUNDS of wood--growable/renewable.

1,000 POUNDS of metals--finite supply.

TOTAL: 45,000 POUNDS

* Only about 30 percent of the 2,000 pounds of wood we each use in a year goes into paper; the bulk of our wood goes into plywood, lumber, particleboard, and other long-lasting materials that we use for houses, furniture, and such. In recent years we're learned to make products from an additional 300 pounds (per person) of bark, slabs, and sawdust that used to be waste, created in manufacturing.

Adapted from: Passage to a Human World, by Max Singer: Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, NJ.-- C. Hudson Institute, Inc. (1989) and Statistical Abstract of The United States (1993).

QUESTIONS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

* How are people like whales? How are they different?

* What is horsepower?

* How much horsepower is in your family's garage?

* How do you use that power?

* How much tax did your family pay for cars, tires, gas, and oil last year? How was that tax money used? Did your taxes pay for things you need in order to drive?

* If your family has forestland or you know someone with forestland, find out how much tax was paid on that land and how the taxes were used. Did the taxes pay for things the forests need?

* What kinds of materials do Americans use the most now? How do they use that material?

* What kind of material did people use the most in 1850? How did they use them?

* What were the most important prime movers in America in 1990? 1910? 1890? 1850?

* Read the labels on the things your family buys this week to see where things come from. How many miles did a week's worth of "stuff" for your family travel? How many pounds of stuff did you buy? What kind of material was it? Was any of it grown?

* How many pounds of trash did your family put out to be hauled away last week? What kinds of materials were in there? Were they separated (paper, metal, glass)? Where were they taken, and what was done with them?

* What wood-based forest products does your family use? Where do they come from? Do any forests near you grow any of the wood for any of your products? If not, why not?

LESTER A. DECOSTER--series author, is President of The DeCoster Group, a Reston, Virginia, consulting firm offering expertise in writing, public relations, forestry, and environmental science.