4 ~ Sunday, May 2, 1993 - North Shore News e MY OLD buddy Pat Moore, now the nemesis of the en- vironmental movement, and I got together for a few drinks recently, after J had written a three-part series about whether his role as a spokesman for the forest industry (in view of his previous history as a Greenpeace leader) made him an eco-Judas or not. His name, once synonymous with cadical green activism, is now prominantly displayed along with the likes of Jack Munro, Adam Zimmerman and Mike Harcourt as a defender of the status quo in B.C.'s (indeed, Canada’s) forests. A recent speech of Moore’s toa Montreal gathering of pulp and paper heavies was reprinted in The Globe & Mail, in which he basically said the clearcut junkies who control! the industry were be- ing picked on unfairly by the in- ternational environmental move- ment. Moore argued that because Canada has more natural forest left than Europe, Europeans shouldn't waste time fretting over whether we chew it up and spit it out. If there is any logic in this, 1 tail to see it. It boils down tos let's trash everything here too. This has nothing to do with science or preservation of the world's few remaining temperate rainforests. Mocrc's apparent sellout to the forest industry has stirred deep reseniment among environmen- talists across the country. His defenders argue that he was never philosophically opposed to logging. which, alas, would mean he was a lumberjack in eco- freak’s clothing all along. He was raised, of course, in the logging community of Winter Rarbour, where his father, Bill, a poet as well as a logger, run the camp. 1, for one, always assumed there was some kind of Oedipal trip going on there. How intrigu- ing, from a psychological point of view, for the son of a logger to become an interdisciplinary ecologist. Just on the surface, there is rich material for the kind of epic West Coast novel a Ken Kesey might write. : There is, in fact, something very much like a Kesey character's behavior in what Moore is up to. I’m thinking of Hank Stamper, . the defiant individualistic private logger in Sometimes A Great No- tion. | know that Moore identifies with Kesey’s stuff. Peer group pressure being the terrible thing that it is, it takes a certain spunk to turn around and give your finger to what was once “your side.”? At least, that’s one way of in- WERE GETTING OUR “TTRAVEL VACCINATIONS) | ALL STRICTLY PERSONAL terpreting it. Of course, I tend to romanticize the loner, the renegade, the out- sider, the guy who stands on his own two feet and doesn’t run with the pack, And so I'm probably “soft’’ on Moore, as I've been accused of being by hardcase en- vironmentalists. I'm sorry, but I still enjoy his wit, intelligence and charm. He manuged to make me feel guilty for not talking to him be- fore writing my columns, and ; saddened me by revealing that his wife and father were personally upset because | had written unkind things about him, and since I know and like both of them, it hurt. But we seem to have reached a philosenhical parting of the ways here. | cans buy his argument that rie’s somehow working from within to change things substan- tially. The question isn’t whether Pat is capable of thick-skinned in- dependence of thought, it is whether he has sold his expertise to a propaganda campaign being waged by big-bucks people to maintain the level of destruction of the remaining old-growth forests in B.C, while they can. There is no doubt Moore is be- ing paid a pretty penny for pro- pagandizing on behalf of the Forest Alliance, the industry mouthpiece organization headed by big, chain-smoking Jack Munro, a gentleman with whom ! had the pleasure of sitting down for a drink not that long ago, along with Moore and Mr, Zimmerman. The three of them were working as ateam, no doubt about it. it’s not as though Pat Moore was a scientist offering his objective, tenured opinion in the form of a paper. He’s with them. And to the extent that they are the guys leading the chainsaw massacre of the last substantial ancient forests in B.C., Pat has to take his share of responsibility now, along with Munro, Zim- merman, Harcourt, et al. for the logging of Clayoquot Sound that the NDP is sneaking through, in flagrant betrayal of Stephen Owen's Commission on Resources and Environment, Witty and charming as he may still be, Pat Moore is now a pro- minent partisan in the political coalition that has tipped the balance of power in favor of the loggers. What nobody asks is how valuable a place like Clayoquot Sound, intact, will be a generation from now, let alone its ever-ap- preciating worth in the centuries io come. ht will not take even a century, for sure, before it becomes one of British Columbia's — even Canada’s, if Canada survives ~ most fabulous treasures. Once reduced to a jigsaw of denuded fragments, the great value of the place, an intact wa- tershed, is lost, quite literally for- ever. ft is all very well to talk about replanting, but even haifa millenium won't see the damage - repaired. This is an unfortunate time for Pat Moore to pick up the chain- saw he once put down in the search for an understanding of ecology. Because we are on the verge of civil war. But Pat's abandonment of the cause of preserving the natural world is small potatoes compared with the U-turn Mike Harcourt has done. In the next column we'll look at how Harcourt has become possibly the number one enemy of the environment in Canada. eg Brtin SAE LT TNO GIMMICKS — JUST | HONEST HARD WORK ‘ BARBARA DAHL feuT “BARBIE DOLL’ TO WORK FOR YOU 983-2518 HEY! THAT WASN'T] [AND NOW THAT [VE SO BAD! \tHATE Ta Ow! 0000! NEED Smart-looking, oh si classically- styled comfortable clothing for men and women! 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