If the issue of timber certification proves one thing, it’s that activist campaigners are willing to distort, lie and even intimidate to maintain their influence.
It’s easy to toss an issue so obscure into the weeds, but these machinations are real and they are costing the American consumer.
The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is the forest certification metric of choice for the environmental lobby. The standard is further buoyed as the lone means of certification included in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards, which is enforced by 14 federal agencies and 34 state governments.
These various government edicts taken in sum and it’s apparent FSC has an extraordinary monopoly on green building projects in America.
This unusual government preference for FSC comes even as numerous other reputable certification systems exist, including the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI).
Worse, the flaws with FSC are vast and immediate.
Less than a quarter of all forests certified by FSC are even in North America and the program’s regional variances mean that it’s nearly impossible to establish a consistent metric for timber certification. It has 23 varying standards across the glob, lacking a single uniform approach. In practice, it means that timber import from another country would be necessarily lesser than timber sourced from the few American-approved forests.
But having built their certification empire, environmentalists are not ready to cede any regulatory ground to competing standards.
FSC and its allies in the environmental lobby routinely accuse rival programs of allowing clear-cutting; in truth, however, FSC’s regional variances has wrought this very result.
One regional standard, found in Russia, actually allows for clear-cutting forests, the very thing activists prop up as justification for shutting out competition. Just last year, IKEA found themselves in the crosshairs of international scrutiny for following these standards.
Furthermore, the fact that so few American forests are certified by FSC means that timber is frequently imported from these clear-cut forests to meet the demands of certifying government buildings as green. The energy exerted to transport the timber is dramatically increased from what it would otherwise be, and many American timber jobs are a non-starter.
In short, surface-level support for FSC is hardly consistent with the supposed goals of environmental activists and reeks of inconsistency and hypocrisy from the get-go.
It’s better understood when the deep ties FSC maintains with the most radical elements of the green “movement” are given the light of day. The intra-workings here are the root cause of the abrasive, unethical tactics used in attempts to keep the monopoly in place.
For instance, consider the connections fringe groups like the Dogwood Alliance maintains with FSC.
Dogwood has repeatedly launched public smear campaigns against businesses that choose SFI as their timber certification metric, with notable targets in the last decade including Office Max, Office Depot, Staples, and Kentucky Fried Chicken. The tactics incorporated into these smear efforts have included the absurd, such as an “Occupy KFC” protest, to outright civil disobedience and disinformation campaigns.
Reality is that these efforts are being pushed for the financial benefit of Dogwood, not the environmental righteousness they claim. The group’s Executive Director, Danna Smith, sits on FSC’s 15-member Board of Directors and the 5-member Environmental Chamber within that board.
The ties that bind radical enviros to FSC don’t stop there, though. We’ve previously touched on the fact that FSC’s regional standards permit clear cutting in Russia, which landed IKEA in hot water. Rather than call out FSC for enabling a risky practice, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has instead called on companies drawing from Russian resources to “exclusively purchase FSC-certified products,” saying that forests and tigers are left endangered from logging that doesn’t rely on their preferred metric.
Call it willful misdirection or blatantly ignoring facts, but if the radicals were consistently anything other than pencil-pushers for their own agenda they’d call out obvious problems.
Dogwood and the WWF are just the cusp of the FSC’s radical defenders, though. Infamous agitator Greenpeace has also waged all-out assault on businesses unwilling to conform to their personal agenda. A recent Forbes piece meticulously detailed the group’s total botching of an attack on Resolute, a Canadian forestry company. Unlike so many other victims in the past, this time the business fought back, dismantling the charges and forcing Greenpeace to issue an apology and admittance that it had relied on inaccurate information.
Most troubling, though, is the report’s note that the no-holds barred strategy employed by Greenpeace and others is “hardly unique – it mirrors the aggressive tactics used by the FSC in establishing itself as a powerful voice in the forestry eco label movement.”
In other words, use FSC standards or face the full-wrath of a public arm-twisting and intimidation tactics. Call it “greenmail,” if you will.
These practices by what amounts to a radical sect have left the timber industry in America hogtied to FSC’s flaw-ridden formula, completely shirking the common-sense logic of competition to improve standards. And the USGBC has thrown its yoke in with this lot, a move it would be wise to reconsider, as the cost to taxpayers won’t go unnoticed.
Beginning with Maine’s Paul LePage and Georgia’s Nathan Deal, several governors have issued executive orders prohibiting FSC from future usage on state building projects. Deal’s decision appeared to trigger a domino-like effect in the South, with Florida, Mississippi, and Alabama following suit in cracking down on FSC’s monopoly.
Now’s the time for those at the federal level to follow suit. Continuing to allow the greed of the few to dictate and intimidate decisions impacting the many isn’t fair to the economy or environment. It’s time to open the doors of competition when it comes to timber certification standards.
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