Tipping point is near for health of Earth; time for compromise is gone.

Byline: GUEST VIEWPOINT By Tim Hermach For The Register-Guard

On Jan. 22, The Register-Guard published a profile of me and the organization I head, the Native Forest Council. I was portrayed as uncompromising - which is perfectly accurate. But what was missing from the article was the urgency of the cause we are fighting for: humanity's dependence upon the natural world for its survival.

Once this issue is put into proper perspective, it becomes obvious why not one more sliver of our forest legacy should be sacrificed, and why even a hundred years ago Teddy Roosevelt said the time for compromise was long past.

Our forests, the commons of the Earth, are a crucial component of our planet's self-regulating climate system. Overcutting our forests contributes significantly to global warming, and is a threat to ecosystems, habitat and water quality.

The continuing degradation of water quality is plain. The dams on the McKenzie River, Eugene's water supply, were engineered in the 1960s, before the steep mountainsides above the river were clear-cut. The Eugene Water & Electric Board has spent $15 million on drinking water wells to hedge against catastrophic events made increasingly likely by Weyerhaeuser and friends' destructive logging of Eugene's watershed.

Water quality has also been degraded by herbicides and pesticides sprayed to plant and manage industrial-scale tree plantations where native forest ecosystems once thrived. Drought and the threat of forest fires have also increased as the temperatures of cut-over forests are radically elevated.

The public is forced to accept these consequences as the price of keeping industry competitive, protecting jobs and keeping profits flowing. The sad truth is the systematic degradation of our forests incurs uncounted costs for the many, and counted profits for the few.

We seldom get the complete picture about this, because access to the government and the media has been usurped by the wealthy and powerful. Global warming offers a sobering example. Scientists worldwide agree that the Earth is warming and that the fragile web of life that regulates the planet's climate is under attack. Yet global corporations, enriched by the wealth they extract, have misled the public with billion-dollar misinformation campaigns.

James Lovelock names carbon, cows and chain saws as the primary human causes of global heating. Lovelock is the father of the Gaia hypothesis, which explains how systems have evolved over millions of years to create a self-regulating system of life-friendly temperature control and chemical composition on Earth.

As the removal of native forest ecosystems has accelerated - ecosystems that cycle water, carbon and oxygen - and the volume of carbon and methane pollutants has increased, the dynamics of climate feedback have been altered and temperatures have risen to the hottest levels ever measured. Half the cover of forest ecosystems, a vital component of this self-regulating system, has already been removed for building, fiber and agriculture.

Lovelock warns that we are perilously close to the tipping point at which our climate will leap to unfriendly temperatures - not gradual global warming, but catastrophic global heating within one or two decades.

These priceless and irreplaceable forests and watersheds are the commons upon which we depend for life. In the name of free markets and efficiency, global corporations continue to harvest the planet's lungs at an increasing rate with little or no accounting of the true costs and consequences. Industrial logging has put all of nature and creation at risk (check our Web site, www.forestcouncil.org, for obscene images).

If we care about human survival and civilization, we need to take a hard look at the true costs of what we are doing to nature. We have disturbed the equilibrium of the planet. We won't compromise our way out of this crisis. We've run out of time for further lopsided debate, and do not have room for compromise. We owe it to ourselves and our children to do no further harm. We can and should do everything in our power to stop making it worse - now.

So how do we get from here to there?

Too much has been already been lost, compromised away. We will continue losing our climate, our forested watersheds and our drinking water to Weyerhaeuser and friends unless we act now. Call your utility, city, county, state and federal officials and tell them to save what's left of our forests, trees and drinking water. While we may not be able to undo the damage, it's never too late to stop making things worse.

Tim Hermach of Eugene is president of the Native Forest Council.