I care little what timber companies do with the land we gave them last century. But if they're cutting down OUR trees on OUR land, then they have to replant that acreage. If they can't do that profitably, then too bad. There is no right to profit.
You have shown you know very little of the timber industry. Private landowners are under the same laws with respect to replanting as the public lands are. Public lands are logged, sold, and the profits returned to the public in the same free market system. No matter, it ALL has to be replanted.
On what planet do you think someone is just letting perfectly good land that can support a forest just sit barren? Unless it's re-zoned into something else, that's not profitable nor sustainable. Our forests are very sustainable.
Timber, pulp, paper are all cyclic. Always have been, always will be.
If you think the pulp and paper industry will ever be what it once you are fooling yourself. In the electronic age paper is far down it's not even funny. I grew up in a pulp and paper town that is a shell of what it once was.
Snark aside, you are showing your spots and how little you know. Forks is not a pulp and paper town. It's a logging town. Thus, I didn't grow up in Forks.
You're just plain wrong about automation, that isn't what is killing the pulp and paper mills. If that were the case the mills and the companies associated with those mills would be doing fine - just with less people. No, the mills themselves are in decline due to a lack of use for their product.
E-books, electronic documents, decline of newspapers. This isn't the 70s, this is a paperless world and only going to get more so.
No contest the decline of print media is effecting the paper industry.
It's been a while since I've looked (or cared). I've long assumed growth in pulp tracked with the economy. I didn't consider increased recycling or the economic crash (2008). Either way, I couldn't quickly find info (e.g. Wolfram Alpha).
We're talking past each other. I really don't care about the fortunes of the timber, pulp, paper industries. They've been terrible stewards of the earth. You say they've improved. Sorry, I just can't imagine that.
It's possible that the "fallow" restored forests of the northeast (mentioned upthread) are the future for elsewhere. Maybe. I don't see it in the short term. Between the pine beetle and ever greater risk of forest fires (in hindsight the bad burn mgmt as well as drying due to climate change), our forests are in trouble. To say nothing of sprawl and over development in fire prone areas...
Any way.
You really need to cut out the ad hominen. You're convinced you're right and I'm a noob. Fine. I feel you're just repeating industry misinformation. Fine. But there's no discourse when you sink to throwing around insults.
I feel you're just repeating industry misinformation.
Industry misinformation or the actual laws for the states of Washington and Oregon, which follow countless other states and provinces in the Western US and Canada? You on the other hand are stuck repeating misinformation from the 80's anti-logging spotted owl rhetoric.
BTW, it's hardly an ad hominem. I'm not attacking you personally to discredit what you are saying - what you are saying is just factually wrong.
You have shown you know very little of the timber industry. Private landowners are under the same laws with respect to replanting as the public lands are. Public lands are logged, sold, and the profits returned to the public in the same free market system. No matter, it ALL has to be replanted.
On what planet do you think someone is just letting perfectly good land that can support a forest just sit barren? Unless it's re-zoned into something else, that's not profitable nor sustainable. Our forests are very sustainable.
Timber, pulp, paper are all cyclic. Always have been, always will be.
If you think the pulp and paper industry will ever be what it once you are fooling yourself. In the electronic age paper is far down it's not even funny. I grew up in a pulp and paper town that is a shell of what it once was.