MIM Notes No. 202      January 15, 2000

Environmentalist leaves perch in tree after two-year protest

by MC17

After a two year protest living in a redwood tree in a forest in Stafford 
California, Julia Butterfly Hill came down from the 1000 year old tree on 
December 18th. Hill lived in the tree since December 10, 1997 to protest 
logging being carried out in the area by Pacific Lumber/ Maxxam 
Corporation.(1)

Hill reached an agreement with Pacific Lumber to leave the tree which is 
on land they own. The agreement includes Hill paying $50,000 to Pacific 
Lumber to compensate them for lost logging revenue. In return Pacific 
Lumber agreed to spare the redwood tree Hill was living in and to spare a 
2.9 acre zone around the tree.(1) 

$50,000 is pennies for a huge logging company and so, to promote its 
public image, Pacific Lumber decided to donate $50,000 to the Humboldt 
State University for forestry studies. But Hill's protest did create some 
bad publicity for the company and impeded its work so the settlement is 
worth a lot more than $50,000. As a Pacific Lumber spokeswoman said "We 
can now focus on our business and the future..."

For Hill's part, saving only 2.9 acres of trees (and paying $50,000 for 
that) for two years of effort does not seem like much. But to her credit, 
she has also gained a tremendous amount of publicity for the fight 
against corporate old-growth timber logging.

Logging corporations in this country have cut about 97 percent of the 
ancient coastal redwood forest that once covered two million acres. Only 
4% of the original forests in this country remain.(2)

The failure of this environmental movement in the u.s. that works to stop 
corporate logging is its reformist approach. The corporations will not 
agree to anything that hurts their profits. So when protests interfere 
with their logging, they will sometimes concede to small changes in their 
practice to, as the Pacific Lumber spokespersyn said, "focus on our 
business" again. But these small changes will never go far enough to stop 
the environmental destruction being caused by capitalism.

And many u.s. environmentalists focus on saving trees within u.s. borders 
while ignoring forests being logged by these same corporations in the 
Third World. When the people protest the destruction of their land in the 
Third World they are killed by the military working with the 
corporations, instead of being allowed to live in trees for two years.

Environmentalists need to recognize that as long as capitalism exists, 
there will be profit in destroying the environment. The true 
environmental struggle has to be waged against the system of capitalism 
so that we can put into place a system that benefits the long term good 
of all of humanity and preserves the environment.

Notes: 1. Washington Post, December 19, 1999 p. A22. 2. Luna Tree web 
site http://www.lunatree.org/