The purpose of the Evergreen Alliance is four-fold:
First, it will explore fully the physical, economic and social impacts of BC’s extraordinary undertaking to replace its primary forests with limited-diversity plantations.
Secondly, we will hold accountable those officials—both government and corporate—who are responsible for conducting this war on nature, for misrepresenting the damage that’s been done, and for hindering efforts to bring it to a close.
Thirdly, we will create a comprehensive case for much greater conservation, restoration and regeneration of forested ecosystems and a vision of how BC’s own need for wood products can be met without destroying ecosystems.
Fourthly, we provide a portal into actions you can take on various fronts, all aimed at making a positive difference for BC’s forests. Together with the tools and information we provide, and the skills and energy you and other like-minded citizens provide, these avenues of action are concrete measures that can be employed to preserve what remains of BC’s precious natural legacy.
To be clear, by “much greater,” we mean a reduction in the volume of forest cut each year to around 20 percent of the current level of logging.
The purpose of this section of the Evergreen Alliance website—Making the Case—is to generate ideas and actions that will allow the comprehensive case for much more forest conservation to be broadly amplified to the BC public and the rest of the world.
Having spent close to 20 years publishing a print magazine that attempted to communicate ideas similar to those you will find on this site, and knowing how difficult it is to leverage mainstream media out of their perpetual state of shallow coverage, I have no illusions about the usefulness of newspapers, radio and TV to accelerate massive change. Institutions are not revolutionary, and a revolution in both action and communication is what’s needed to make the paradigm shift to much greater conservation of BC’s forests.
Where will the revolution come from?
Logging companies are not going to change voluntarily. The only way they can survive from year to year, as currently constituted, is to maximize the area of forest they destroy. Government, under current legislation, is not going to change. BC’s ministry of forests has been captured by the industry and is not going to reduce the cut unless the political system shifts ownership of the ministry of forests back into public hands. And mainstream media, especially those companies still dependent on cheap paper, are not going to suddenly start arguing against their own economic interests.
To stop BC’s war on nature and conserve what’s left of our primary forests depends on us. We need new ideas on how to connect the public with a complex set of issues. The institutions that the public relies on for understanding such issues are not telling the public the whole truth (see the Fifth Estate’s video below, which did tell an important part of the truth).
The Evergreen Alliance is a community of citizens, foresters, scientists and journalists collaborating to protect the future of BC forests. Working together toward greater conservation will require finding the truth about what’s happening to our forests and communicating what we find to the broadest possible audience.
Please ask yourself: “What’s my biggest revolutionary idea for how to unleash the whole truth about the destruction of BC forests?” Then tell us. Meaningful change has to start somewhere. It might as well be here and it needs to be now.
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