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SOUTHERN STUMPIN’ By David Abbott • Managing Editor • Ph. 334-834-1170 • Fax: 334-834-4525 • E-mail: david@hattonbrown.com
Fighting Windmills ave you ever heard the expression “tilting at windmills”? It originates in the 1605 Spanish novel Don Quixote by author Miguel de Cervantes. Widely regarded as the first modern novel and often cited as foundational to Western literature, Don Quixote influenced later works like Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers and Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. One of the most widely translated works of fiction in the world, it has remained a popular classic for over 400 years. The titular protagonist is delusional; a lower class gentleman, he imagines himself to be a knight of great nobility. He’s a wannabe hero, a visionary idealist lost in his own fantasy of the world. He goes on a series of adventurous, often humorous quests. In one of the novel’s more famous scenes, Don Quixote mistakes a bunch of windmills for giants. Since he fancies himself a chivalrous knight with the duty to vanquish these monsters, he decides to attack them. His faithful sidekick/squire, simple peasant farmer Sancho Panza, who served as the voice of reason, tries to convince his master of the truth, but Quixote won’t listen. So the would-be knight charges at the windmills, only to get himself pummeled by the spinning sails. The “battle” is of course both needless and futile, accomplishing nothing. The windmills were just there, inanimate and indifferent to Quixote’s misperception of them. They weren’t a threat to him, and he couldn’t really do anything much to them, either. “Tilting,” by the way, means jousting, the way medieval knights liked to fight. So the expression “tilting at windmills” basically means to fight against an imaginary enemy; to waste time, energy and resources on a pointless quest. These days, windmills, like everything else in our ever-more-divided cultural landscape, have been politicized on both the left and the right. Like electric cars, windmills have become symbolic of “Green New Deal” energy/environmental policies, part of the liberal/progressive agenda aimed at reducing greenhouse emissions, replacing fossil fuels with clean, renewable energy and reversing climate change. Some folks think this is a good idea, even a vital one; others think it’s a fool’s errand, or worse, a scam. Depending on where you live and what you do for a living, your view of all this might blow one direction or the other.
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Changing Winds Lately, it seems to me that members of the logging community with whom I have interacted don’t seem quite as negative or hostile towards the concept of climate change as seemed to be the case maybe 10 or 15 years ago. If not entirely positive, the attitude seems at least neutral. 6
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Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to imply anyone is applying for membership in a tree-hugger society. But there seems to be an acknowledgment that there might be some truth to climate change, and moreover, a recognition of the fact that a lot of people believe climate change is a fact. Myself, I have neither the qualifications nor the inclination to debate the science or the politics of it, on one side or the other. Believe in it or not, though, arguing over it might be a counterproductive waste of time. Trying to change people’s minds might be a fight against windmills (both figuratively and literally). Seems like we’ve had a tendency to cast the logging community and environmental activists as natural enemies, on opposite sides of the issue. And when we think about halted timber sales, spotted owls, deserted mill towns and wildfires in westerns states, it’s easy to see why. It seems so obvious as to need no explanation: loggers cut trees; environmentalists don’t want trees cut. But maybe it doesn’t have to be that way, and maybe it isn’t that simple or clear-cut. Maybe the social/political dimension of the climate change debate might actually represent a positive opportunity for the industry. At the ALC Annual Meeting last fall, Scott Dane discussed the importance of selling what people are buying. It might be the first rule of business, really: give the people what they want. If you want to sell cars, make cars people want to drive. If you want to sell music, make music people want to listen to. And if you want to sell a narrative, tell a story people want to hear. As Scott put it, we know what the current administration in DC is buying—what drives their agenda. We can and must work with whatever side is in power if we want to accomplish things, and we have to be able to meet them where they are, not where we wish them to be. It’s important we tell our side of the story, which, conveniently, also happens to be the truth: that loggers are, and should be recognized as, part of the solution, not the problem, when it comes to clean energy and a healthy planet. Many of the loggers I talk to throughout the country tell me how highly they prioritize working to improve the public perception of logging, to rehabilitate the industry’s image. It’s not a deceitful spin or PR campaign to cover up anything nefarious. It’s just about better educating a poorly informed public about a vital, necessary sector that has been widely misrepresented and misunderstood.
Common Ground Last summer my family and I went to see the iconic country band Alabama perform at the Wharf Amphitheater in Orange Beach, Alabama. This was the sixth time I have seen them in concert in the
last 30 years—you could say I’m a fan. They opened the show with their hit song from 1990: Pass It On Down. The song is basically a conservationist anthem: “Let’s leave some blue up above us, let’s leave some green on the ground. It’s only ours to borrow, let’s save some for tomorrow, keep it and pass it on down.” It reminds me of my dad lamenting modern pollution compared to the clean water and forests he enjoyed growing up in rural Arkansas in the 1950s. Well, my dad and Alabama aren’t exactly flaming liberals; and there’s no reason why protecting (or responsibly managing) natural resources for future generations should be politicized or controversial. Environmentalists want less pollution, clean air and clean water, right? Well, those are our values, too. Who would be against clean air and water and less pollution? We all want these things. That’s some common ground; we can build on it. Sure, there are some in that movement who go too far; but my guess is most of them just don’t know what they don’t know. They mean well; maybe they see themselves as idealistic heroes, as knights attacking giants. We just need to help them see that we are not the enemy; in fact, in many ways, our goals align. Environmentalists want to stop deforestation. You know who’s really against deforestation? People who make their living from the forest! Families who plan to stay in logging generationally want to see trees replanted to be harvested in sustainable and responsible ways, because their livelihood today and the future livelihood of their children and grandchildren depends on it. It’s their legacy and they want to pass it on down. Loggers, for the most part, don’t get into logging for how great the money is. They do it because they love being in the woods. They’re not out to destroy the thing they love. It’s a misperception that needs to be corrected with education, communication and good PR. If the political goal is to mitigate the effects of man-made climate change, then a timber industry helping to sustainably manage healthy forests that can constantly regenerate and absorb carbon in the atmosphere must be an essential part of that plan. The new, younger generations believe in climate change; denying it is a losing strategy. Ridiculing that belief will get you nowhere. Rather than being antagonistic to those with differing political views, a wiser strategy might be to embrace, adapt and adjust. Put another way: if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em—but on your own terms, by showing how you can contribute to helping them get what they want. Form alliances instead of making enemies so you can have a voice in policymaking; be a part of the conversation and get a seat at the table so you can bring your point of view to the discussion. Either that, or we could just keep fighting windSLT mills.
MAY 2022 l Southern Loggin’ Times
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