“Son this ain’t a game no more, it’s the real thing.” – Bob Dylan. Former President Trump referred to poor undeveloped nations as “shithole countries.” Agree or not, the cause of their poverty is that they were all resource extraction colonies for the “great nations of Europe” who plundered ivory, diamonds, hardwoods in Africa, tin, silver, gold, hardwoods in South America. Today it’s multinational corporations – Mitsubishi, Rio Tinto Zinc, Chevron – entering regions by force or subterfuge, promising economic salvation, ripping off the resources and leaving social and environmental devastation behind.
Two CVN front page stories made me wonder if we’re next. Multi-billion-dollar Japanese smelting company DOWA now owns the Palmer Project. NWFP Inc. is high bidder on the Baby Brown 1,000-acre timber sale. NWFP is Oregon-based but owner Stan Runnels’ Facebook page shows him loading logs onto the freighter Xing Ning Xu. Guess where those logs are headed. DOWA doesn’t promise us anything, but they will certainly leave behind a toxic legacy. Mr. Runnels’ former company Astoria Forest Products promised “a good deal for Haines” in 2016, but never explained what was good about the deal. If Stan sticks around to log 6,000 acres of University land, the sediments from 7,000 acres of stump land will join DOWA’s heavy metals in the Chilkat. What will Trump call us then?
What shall we, dear readers, say or do, if anything, about this? “You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.” -Joni Mitchell
Eric Holle