Trump administration orders half of national forests open for logging
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Yes, this means a ton of carbon ends up in the atmosphere instead of in the trees. The right move would be thinning and prescribed burns, but this administration isn't going to do that.
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These are our forests. They belong to the US people. They're being stolen from us. For private profit of a few.
It's an American tradition.
You stole that whole country
Moot, pointless, argument.
This argument accomplishes what exactly? Aside from trying to just stir the pot or create culture war drama?
It's okay for public lands to be raped and razed now? Because (like damn near all the land in the world, everywhere) was taken during war/conflict?
oddly relevant
Our native Americans the only ones who are allowed to be concerned about the country it's land and the environment?
Your argument and point again only serves to further the culture war aspect of this and does nothing to address the problem at hand.
no but only being concerned now when it directly impacts you is pretty funny
the original comment was about ‘we’re being stolen from’ seems pretty relevant but I get how white America doesn’t want to think about it
that's just your little opinion
A little opinion is appropriate in response to a small minded comment.
No one asked for yours anyway.
And are you mislabeling it as 'small minded' bcs it's directly confronting your hypocrisy?
Looks like you've got a case of the projections.
And who asked for yours? Are you just special?
LOL, I'm not an American.
ROFLMAO I can't even, ZERO self awareness with this bloke.
Oh you're from the country that's clearly in the same boat.
Or the bigger boat since you plundered a lot more.
imagine feeling the need to get involved when you have no skin in the game
how about you watch your people get fucked a few generations and while it’s going on this moment people are complaining about your response over their hypocrisy
"They're gonna chop down national forests"
"bUt WhAT aBoUt ThE iNdIaNs???"
bruh
more like ‘now you care? lol’
Sorry I didn't care 400 years ago. I'll try harder.
How many cared when it was decided there would be an oil pipeline through the pittance they were relegated to? More land stolen, and everything around it polluted in time to add insult to injury.
Did you care then, just a few years ago?
I mean, people didn't do nothing.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/native-americans-white-farmers-join-forces-oppose-summit-carbon-captur-rcna52523
Not near enough to actually change a damn thing though, was it?
I mean shit, the company responsible is now trying to take down Greenpeace -the entire entity- in court over the whole affair, it is that confident in how fucked the US judicial system is.
They got to choose where to hold a trial with global ramifications, and tainted the entire possible jury pool by restricting it to some poxy little oil town that would cease to exist if not for the oil industry.
How many of you turned out to protest that?
that’s better than nothing but that’s self interest and farmers were right to be worried
none of that changes anything on a national level nor changed the actual outcome so the criticism is still valid
it’s happening to native lands in the US while we speak, the fact you are not even aware earns the ‘lol’
Americans get real mad when confronted with their hypocrisy.
What country are you from, and how many people did it ship over to north america to colonize it?
lol this thread full of privileged white Americans is whining about takes and then you drop this and it’s upvoted
double down on the hypocrisy guys
We didn't export criminals.
And besides the point, it's about admitting it happened.
Which is very difficult for Americans looking at the angry reactions.
yep
The opinion of people who write like this can't be take seriously
👍
Whataboutism.
2 wrongs don't make a right.
The point is that you admit your wrongs.
As they clearly can't and get very defensive, as hypocrites do.
I mean, as the other guy pointed out, you as a people stole the fucking lot and literally massacred thousands upon thousands of people to do it.
Shoe's on the other foot now, eh?
Ah yes, because native Americans celebrate the raping of their lands as long as the people who took it from them hundreds of years ago descendants (unlikely, given how many generations are immigrants) are also having their lands raped too.
Get the fuck out here with this brain-rot level argument. 🤦
Go stir the pot somewhere else.
that shit didn’t stop happening ‘hundreds of years ago’ natives are getting fucked over by America regarding land rights as we speak
fuck off yourself
obviously you wouldn't know this though because it only matters when it happens to you, typical privileged white america
You're right in that it was a comment designed to "stir the pot", if by that you mean, "make someone stop for a moment and consider their position in history".
I agree that any right thinking person, of Native American origin or otherwise should be aghast at the current US administrations utter destruction of everything, from old growth forest to human structures of civilisation.
Reading it back, my comment sounds flippant and ignorant. That's on me for commenting pre-coffee and smoke. 💛
I don't think you all on .ee can help that, you seem to be solely a propaganda instance.
Have you even looked at my comment history to decide what kind of person I am, or did you decide that purely from where I registered my account over a year ago?
Have I seen you around yes, I believe we've even interacted before. That said no in don't profile creep which is why I made a general statement I think I'm probably correct on.
Both times it was the government to the greatest extent.
"The government" offered money for the task, and thousands took that money and got on with the job.
"The Government" is people. Usually the worst, most manipulative self-serving people. It does what other people let it get away with.
Fuck. This kind of shit is why I feel the need for revenge on these people. They're slashing forests and impoverishing the population. It's not enough for them to lose an election. they need to pay
I want my pound of fucking flesh.
Uhm, why can he just decide this? Not part of his expertise or departement.
Trump doesn't like that the US buys lumber from Canada. He's going to announce 34% tariffs on lumber from Canada in the next few days.
Other than the Pacific northwest most U.S. forest trees do not make good building lumber.
The rest is an assault on the natural world.
In addition to the blanket tariffs already announced? Seriously I think that guy might be an evil alien supervillain or something. He seems to be doing his best to ruin the world in any way he can.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/us-hikes-softwood-lumber-duties-1.7503120
He's out to cripple Canada's economy, then he'll attempt to invade it. True evil.
I honestly would prefer that. I don't want to think of Trump as a member of the human race. Plus, it would imply that the bad guys are actually competent. The Trump Regime isn't just evil, it is weaponized secondhand embarrassment.
That our government has been reacting to his shit rather than controlling it is infuriating.
Some national parks might be protected by legislation, such as the Yosemite Act of 1864, but massive amounts of land were protected by the executive branch such as Teddy Roosevelt protecting 150 Million Acres of forest and Joseph Biden protecting 674 Million Acres.
Then you also have Treaties with native americans which can be considered law if Republicans actually acknowledged them as such (they don't).
National Forest Service is a part of the Department of Agriculture, part of the executive branch.
Yeah, but he can decide that alone?
He appoints and directs the head of the department who, in turn, can more or less do so. They've been blatantly ignoring status quo and legal authority for a while now, so unless the supreme court gets the case and disagrees, they're unlikely to stop.
It's the goal of project 2025 that he is able to.
America is a dumpster fire lol, they have all these "checks and balances" but then one guy can just make all the trade policy and land use decisions by decree. What even is the point of their congress
The problem is that Congress is controlled by people who are Trump sycophants — the Republican Party kicked out everybody who wasn't.
All governments at some level run on the honor system. When the whole government colludes to not honor the system, you get this.
Problem is that both houses majorities support the lunatic, right now they've more or less given him a blank check to operate.
Historically, the two party system has meant that Congress either votes with the presidents wishes or against when it comes to legislation, but Congress doesn't directly approve/disprove of executive orders. To oppose executive orders, Congress needs to pass laws that override the orders. That wont happen unless the majority becomes convinced they'll lose elections if they keep supporting trump.
It'll be up to the Judicial Branch to directly rule for/against this order. But the judicial branch only truly has power so long as the executive complies. We're close to hitting the test of that power balance on some of his earlier orders.
Fun fact: the law enforcement of the Judicial Branch is technically an agency under the Executive Branch. Not a problem if people are largely operating in good faith with the law, or at least fear repurcussions if they don't comply... But since Trump doesn't fear repurcussion, this fun fact may be the oversight that breaks the consitution.
Checks and balances all died with citizens united….only one left is the second amendment
The 2nd amendment is part of the Bill of rights which he already trampled multiple times. There is no right to bear arms anymore, they just haven't had a reason to round anyone who uses them up yet.
Any solution that stops short of essentially a factory reset (really should go further tbh) is going to land us here again
We get 30% of our lumber from Canada. This is the inevitable consequence of shutting our borders to trade via tariffs - if these policies stick around for four years, sure, we may bring some manufacturing home at great immediate cost, but we'll also be bringing home the environmental burdens of manufacturing (the negative externalities) which we've been pushing onto other countries and ignoring for decades. In the meantime, other countries have started to learn how to handle those externalities, like China's big push for solar power. In America, we've got an idiot who is rolling back worker safety, health and environmental protections, the list goes on. So even if these tariffs worked, we're going to be living in a less healthy place, all in the name of jobs...
This has nothing to do with the tariffs; even if those weren't happening Trump would be selling the trees off to his cronies anyway. It's a blatantly corrupt kleptocracy.
It has everything to do with lumber tariffs, it's just the other end of the equation. The forests are the supply, and the tariffs will create the demand.
They are privatizing every single thing.
Nothing to do with Tariffs. They just make the business more juicy for his cronies.
The trees can't be harmed if the lorax is armed. You touch his trees, he aims for your knees.
Go go go, Tonya Harding!
Trump has two legs. Just sayin
The Black Knight always triumphs!
It's just a flesh wound!
So just cut one off. Gotcha
The absolute level of stupidity of this is ridiculous. Lumber mills are not designed for old growth trees in the modern era, so all these trees will not even become lumber. Logging has become very sustainable in recent decades. They farm trees and mill them when they reach the size that the machinery at the mills is optimized for. If we just cut down all the forests, the mills can't even process the logs even though it's better lumber. In reality, they'd just send the old growth logs to be ground for pulp which is a total waste. This video does a good job explaining it.
https://youtu.be/efs5-FCVWvg
I think Trump is clearing land for the techno-fiefs that Project 2025 wants to create among the head fascists. He hands out land parcels, gets a reacharound from Thiel and company.
Heil Praxis
Ugh I hate that they used that word
Trump is speedrunning to aim for the lowest biodiversity index in North America.
Maybe if we stop ridiculously subisidising corn everywhere, some that gets thrown away because we have way too much, we could replace a couple dozen sq km of corn fields with more sustainable agroforestry, and thereby massively increase our logging output, instead of yk, cutting down the last wildlife sanctuaries? Not holding my breath tho.
i comfort myself with the knowledge that most worlds are totally dead
zero wildlife is the normal state of things
extinction is only sad to the survivors, and soon enough there will be none left to mourn
My body is not ready for the amount of alcohol and dancing I am going to force myself to take part in on the day this motherfucker dies and goes to hell.
Literally, the most destructive and evil human on the planet since Hitler. I can't wait until the worms get him. I kind of feel bad for them, but I guess it's part of the job.
That scene in the matrix 2
Cutting down old growth Forrest take 50 years to repair the area after its stopped. What a mess.
Yep, can't fix it in our lifetime
I thought i watch a video talking about 50 to 100 but its random YouTube guy soo you could be right and could very dependent on environment. Desertfication is hard to fix.
More like 150-300 if possible at all.
Now that's waaaaay worst.
One of the many reasons I'm pissed at his voters every single day.
Fucking murder this fuck
I got a mod deletion the last time I said anything like this. Good luck and I fucking agree.
Fortunately this community is on slrpnk.net which might not have the same kinds of trigger happy mods as .world?
You've got to be careful how you word it lest the gestapo come for you. I will derive pleasure from reading his obituary though.
I will also say that 18 U.S. Code § 2381 says that he should be well, you know. Or fined and put in jail for five years but that's not as fun.
Finally, a good move by Trump. Those trees are taking up incredible amounts of water. This is water that could be used for more productive things, like being mixed with Kool-aid powder on a hot day. Moreover, the trees emit large amounts of oxygen, a dangerous corrosive gas. Don't listen to liberals -- tree hugging is a dangerous activity that can lead to abrasions from all the bark.
If there's anything I learned from Dr. Seuss' "The Lorax", logging can lead to impressive industrial and commercial activity and has no downsides.
It's insane that I'm 99% sure this is sarcasm, but that 1% has a voice telling me I can't discount Maga being that stupid. This is the age we live in, incredible stupidity.
One can make useful items out of wood.
Guillotines, for example…
Holy shit, America, you are so fucked at this point.
It only the damage was contained within the USA's borders.
That is just... Insane. Incredibly sad.
My first thought. Seems appropriate.
Just fyi, I'm pointing out Trump's similarities to an evil villain. I'm not using this to agree. I'm very much against this, having grown up in the woods (practically raised by my local forest, as my mother was an awful drunk and single parent) and I spent most of my youth walking through the peace and quiet of the trees.
I grew up with my mother seeing nothing but my father in me, and was abused for it. Those trees gave me the shelter I needed and I would have been 100x more a mess if I didn't have them. So no. Don't take my fucking trees en masse.
Then i guess it's time to start living up to the old namesake.
What is it?
George Washington Hayduke is one of the four main characters in The Monkeywrench Gang written by Edward Abbey. They're a group of anarchists that destroy things like earth movers to prevent logging or drilling, and just generally fuck with private companies profiting off of public lands.
Basically, they're eco-terrorists.
I think half country would cheer for poison ivy right now.
I would, but only if you promise that she isn't a package deal with a wing-suited billionaire who's made a deal with the police and the nearest mental health institution to forcibly incarcerate anyone who stands against his ownership of the country. If we pay for the Poison Ivy package, can we get a discount on the Mr. Freeze package, where we get a disgruntled-but-brilliant climate-scientist-cum-virologist who will spray SO3 into the upper atmosphere and synthesize a strong enough volcanic winter to balance out anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions?
Love mr.freeze. favorite villain. Dude just needed funding to help his wife. It was society that didn't fund his life saving research fault. I wonder if Wayne funded him if he back off. Which He kind of did in batman beyond until they tried to kill him.
I'd be happy with a half serving of sanity right now. As a treat.
Yeah probably 30% with another 30% saying this has no impact on their daily lives.
"The eco-terrorists are just as bad as the Nazis!"
It worries me it could be either 30% we are talking about.
You mean awesome. They aren't scaring people, they're stopping a rape. If that scares the rapists, it doesn't make it terrorism.
The labels are usually applied by those with an agenda, oddly enough.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Great-Value-Light-Corn-Syrup-16-fl-oz/10315278?classType=VARIANT
I prefer Karo, but that's the idear.
I predict that any company that participates in destroying the parks will end up even worse off then Tesla. I've been a hiker my whole life and I've met a lot of retired military on the trail.
One would hope, though I have my doubts due to the wood not being a consumer product. People spend little time researching the next president, I would be surprised if enough people track wood sources to the point of being able to accurately boycott
So I just want to chime in here as an outsider. From what I searched, national forests are different from national parks in that, extraction of natural resources from national forests is permitted for commercial and personal use.
Trump's order cites wildfire, insect and disease outbreak as the reason for this change (Biden also sought more logging to combat fire but apparently timber sales did not change much during his tenure). While I agree that forest management is important, Trump had also put tariffs on Canadian lumber and cut down jobs for national park workers. It's not hard to question if there are other motivations other than wildfire prevention in this context.
Here is a good blog post on the nationalforest.org website. Posted in 2013 (according to archive.org).
https://www.nationalforests.org/blog/what-are-the-differences-between-national-parks-and-national-forests
I live in fire country and I can tell you I have zero faith there's going to be any improvement to wildfire prevention. The "inefficient" forestry jobs have all been cut, and now the trails will be overgrown and the weather forecasts will be spottier. Imagine being in a fire crew in that situation, things will be more dangerous now. This is only about extracting resources.
https://apnews.com/article/doge-musk-trump-wildfire-firefighter-pay-firings-fe125ca00f74adbaf996aa23e5d7b408
real estate development probably, if you think about whats going on in gaza, he wants to do the same there, build properties on untainted lands.
So what you're saying is that he isn't using the trees to build properties, but using the land after the trees has been cut to build property. I can't imagine this would fly legally for national forests though.
Gee, why wouldn't I want to cede my country to American management and become the 51st state? You guys are knocking it out of the park, no pun intended.
Already bad enough here in Ontario with Doug "I'm a big Republican" Ford's Ministerial Zoning Order addiction, gutting environmental protection agencies, trying to sell off the Greenbelt, using covid recovery bills to get his dirt done, etc.
Any rein we've been able to keep on the timbit would dissolve into nada if we allowed the US govt to run their game here. I can't even conceive of much worse they'd make the tar sands in Alberta. 90% of the fisheries would just be trawlers digging up seabeds. Plus the dizzying amount of toxic waste they're already legally dumping here and in Mexico?
Elbows up.
Those are our national Forests, they don't belong to fascist billionaires like Trump and Musk! Resist, fight back, and let's tell these Nazis they can't strip our environment, government, healthcare and democracy to give tax breaks to rich people...
Save a forest, shoot a ...
Wait, where's the line where what I say gets me banned again?
In my experience, that line was mostly left over on Reddit.
Vigilante groups tracking and disabling logging equipment?
Fun fact: it doesn't take very much gasoline in a diesel engine to wreck the engine fast. Diesel fuel lubricates the cylinders, while gasoline will strip lubrication off. Rebuilding a diesel engine that's seized because there was no lubrication in the cylinders is a very expensive process. Diesel engines also rely on the compression of the air and fuel to ignite at the correct time, so a low-octane gasoline that was less resistant to pre-ignition in the compression cycle would cause severe engine knock that would also trash the engine.
So the moral of the story is, be very careful that you never put low-octane gasoline in you diesel engine, because you might end up needing to spend tens of thousands of dollars to replace the engine.
March '23 Trump gave a soundbite for his billionaire bosses about building "Freedom Cities." Clear-cutting national forests, then signing an order that makes the area exempt from regulation? Sounds about right.
If they're coming for all federally governed land, indigenous reservations will be on the menu as well (always are).
A hundred years from now the planet will be in a pretty good shape, forests have been regrown and the seas will have been cleaned up and repopulated with fish, except for the US which is a giant hole. Not from bombs exploding, but from strip-mining the whole place for resources.
🙏🏼✝️🔯☯️🕉️ Gods of the universe that ever existed real or fictional Please hear our prayers and please peacefully take this man home. His destruction is too much for the good people of earth to bear. Please consider taking Putin and Netanyahu too Than You. Amen
God here (taking temporary control of a random human as I don't have a mobile device, or thumbs for that matter): I gave y'all free choice - and I'm not talkin' 'bout the vote. Turn off the telly and go start a revolution! (or join an existing rebellion, if you prefer) All my love, God(s)
I’m agnostic but I had to try.
Vance would arguably be worse.
He doesn’t have the cult backing. I honestly think the cult would fracture
Drill, drill, drill! Cut, cut, cut! Slash, slash, slash! Burn, burn, burn! You guys carry on I have to go golfing.
The USA will resemble Russia, China and Mordor.
In the past decade, China has regrown more than 70 million hectares of forest cover. The country has benefited greatly from solutions in biodiversity conservation, sustainable usage and climate governance, resulting in wetland and forest restoration that also combats desertification. (link to a WEF article on China's reforestation efforts)
... it has made "remarkable strides" in tackling the issue, said Xinhua, beginning in 1978 with the launch of the "Great Green Wall of China". Expected to continue until 2050, the "biggest tree-planting project in human history" will ultimately have created "88 million acres of forests in a wall stretching about 3,000 miles and as wide as 900 miles in some places", (article from The Week regarding anti-desertification efforts)
In November 2024, China's government reported that after 46 years of work it had finished the 3,000-kilometer green belt around the Taklamakan Desert. The country's forest coverage grew from 10% of the overall territory in 1949 to 25% in 2024 (this one's a link to the Wikipedia page for the Great Green Wall initiative, if you're interested)
Where's an entmoot when you need one?
Is there a list of which forests opened for logging?
Probably all of them, start with half then charge more to open the second half.
I can't find one, I'd like to see a map but I don't expect there is one.
Meanwhile we get shamed for not reusing the plastic containers we're forced to purchase with our basic groceries.
May time and tide fuck a pres up the arse
this is so fucking retarded. it is going to take longer than his term to build fucking logging factories and its going to cost millions of dollars. plus you have to hire these people and drivers. and guess what? since it's "american" it will just cost more for some reason anyways like everything else "American made" does. what an actual joke for the sheep
I agree with everything you said... except the ableist slur. I have worked with special needs people and they can be some of the sweetest, most genuine, hardest-working people you'll meet! Please ditch the outdated term, we need to be better than that...
I'd be interested to understand more about why you find this usage of the word "retarded" offensive. I sometimes use the word as a synonym for "stupid" or "idiotic", but would never use the term to refer to a person with a developmental disability. I'm curious if your experience is different. Do you feel the word should be eliminated from usage entirely?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
And just in case you're asking in good faith, I don't "find" it offensive, it's a slur. I can't go up to my white friend, call him the n-word and say "I use it for someone who doesn't use turn signals." Words have meaning based on how society uses them collectively, not your individual opinion.
I wasn't trying to troll you; I'm sorry it came across that way. I understood why it was disrespectful to use that word for people, but I didn't realize there was a problem with using it in general. Clearly I have more to learn here.
And I'm sorry I assumed your questions were not genuine, they were! I think this shows we all have blind spots and could stand to learn and grow. Take care, I genuinely wish you the best...
Can you just find the article about this story that's not published in a corporate paper instead of posting this link?
It doesn't take long to find a better source
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_spiking
This is my reccomendation to this news. Remember, put the spike atleast 9ft up, use a non-ferrous material so the detectors don't catch em, and wood glue the bark chunk back overtop.
Once they destroy more than one saw on randomly selected trees, the logging company recognizes the forest as non-viable due to high cost sawmill blade replacements.
Note: pretty sure this is a federal crime btw, so do with that information what you will
Check out Burning Rage of a Dying Planet, And other books by Craig Rosebraugh and Leslie James Pickering, like the yearly global dispatches of the ELF to remind yourself what you absolutely should NOT do to disrupt logging, development and corporate greed.
That's really interesting. I doubt a comment like this would be allowed to remain on Reddit, which is a shame because it naturally would reach a lot more people.
For those who don't want to potentially kill people with flying saw blade pieces, look up the resistance to the Mountain Valley pipeline. It costs a TON to get this heavy equipment into position and build roads to get the felled trees OUT. Even just establishing a bunch of treesits (or supporting those treesits) in the areas where they're building roads or planning to log can be incredibly expensive and disruptive to the planned project - and hurt the profit line, which is all that matters.
Ohhh, I always thought it was to break the saw that was cutting them down, not the mill.
Why people link to a paywalled article in the first place boggles my mind. You're not sharing information, you're just advertising the paper for free.
My best guess is they work for the paper. And we should ban them for advertising
Just wondering, what makes a forest a national forest and does this include trees in national parks or are they protected?
Safe to say, nothing's protected from this admin
Assuming the other half is where they plan to install the oil derricks...
didn't he say it would be like 0.5% of all federal land, or something.
One difference between the fascists and the rest of us is that for us, words have meaning, while for the fascists, they're only a tool for manipulation when spoken to somebody they see as inferior.
tbf he may have said that for housing, but yeah, this admin is excessively stupid. They haven't exactly demonstrated competency.
guess we protesting to stop logging next
That's bullshit. Protests need to start somewhere and gain momentum. Once they're big enough, they become hard to ignore. Then comes the hard part when those in power start to suppres the protests with force. If the protests continue despite this, they can gain much wider sympathy and can really change something. I have seen this several times with my own eyes, including one time when it meant a revolution.
What do you wish to achieve with this comment?
don't we have enough working forests to satisfy demand for lumber? even if we open some BLM land to logging, do we really need to log literally half of it?