The cost burden of a wood-based pulp mill has a much broader reach on the input side than the local pollution – the lies and weasel clauses for chlorine, dioxins and other noxious outputs. The input costs alone cannot possibly justify the risky returns projected for the mill. It is patently obvious that the mill is a crazy venture from the perspective of all but a few subsidy-funded, corporate beneficiaries. The illusory benefits have been dealt with again and again in the Tasmanian Times (1).
While there appears to be an objectionable Burke clause ‘It’s ok to use native forest as an input, if we say so’, I will only address the costs generated by the plantation feedstock.
Disenfranchisement and theft are associated with the land tenure arrangements for huge swathes of Tasmanian land. The PAL policy in particular is designed to remove the rights of small landholders to live on their holdings and to favour large corporate enterprises. New frameworks are being introduced by regulatory bodies, like the Cradle Coast Regional Authority’s draft planning framework which would allow ‘forestry’ to carry on unfettered by neighbours (2). I presume then that the onus of protection against fire falls to the existing neighbours not the invading corporates, and that neighbours cannot insist on weed control. The framework is endorsed by Bryan Green. No-one voted for that and there is no guarantee that consultations will be anything more than a whitewash. Land that belonged once to the ‘crown’, the Tasmanian people, was changed into ‘State Forest’ and gifted to corporates, chipped and then mono-cultured. No one voted for that. When small corporates like Great Southern, FEA and Gunn’s flounder and are picked off by huge plantation entities flying overseas flags, what happens to this land and to freehold titles? If not officially consolidated into a single lump, they are still taken out of the reach of the Tasmanian people. The organisation that controls the land has immense power. I dread the prospect of the owner ending up being Monsanto or Asian Pulp and Paper.
The potential for a diverse (and therefore risk-averse economy) must suffer from the monopolisation of land and its use. So not only does the lion’s share of any profit leave the state, all the eggs are in one basket. Crazy.
I think we have all heard the complaints about smoke inundation, chemical trespass through aerial spraying, loss of groundwater and poisoning of drinking water. We have heard about loss of habitat and the contraction of species diversity. We have witnessed the addition of a huge fire risk to the human and natural environment. None of these complaints have been denied or addressed in any meaningful way. The solution for the corporates is to legislate away the right to complain or get an “authority” to bind locals into accepting the costs. It is some huge cost for citizens to lose control over the essentials needed for life, but it doesn’t seem to be an issue for either our government or public service. They are clearly batting for the other side. You would have to be mad to call this representation.
All that I have mentioned so far is just the real wealth we are losing, let’s talk about money. The trend in the industry is for a move to more environmentally friendly ways of making paper. This accelerating trend was noted 1998 by Hurter at the World Wood Summit (3). The use of agricultural by-products such as straw, banana trees and sugar cane mass can all be used instead of trees. They can be used to produce any quality of paper, some even better than when using hardwood fibre. The by-products can also be used in combination with softwoods and annual crops such as hemp. Non-woods need less energy to break into fibres and less chemical to bleach. Chlorine-free is an option (4).
The cost of transporting fibre to a pulp mill will only increase with the scarcity of fuel. Increasingly, fibre (especially the less dense by-products) will be accessed close to where the pulp mills are located, and the pulp mills will be located close to where the paper is made. There is a dramatic increase in the development of specialised mills designed to take advantage of non-wood fibre sources (5). So why use wood and why shift the pulp all the way from Tasmania? We are being told to subsidise a multi-billion dollar venture with only a short-term prospect, if any, of making money. And again … who benefits? It would make sense for a paper company to set up, chlorine free, in Queensland, produce and then shift the denser end-product to markets. This was in fact an industry recommendation of Covey, Rainey and Shore (2006) in their detailed evaluation of bagasse-based pulp (6). Anti-Pulp Mill people should buy recycled or non-wood paper. It is available and it is no dearer.
The cost of living is set to rise substantially as energy and food prices skyrocket in our carbon-constrained and disaster-prone world. Ask any tourist and they will tell you that food prices in Australia are very high. As a consumer, will I be buying boxes of tissues when I could reuse a handkerchief? The raw materials needed for making facial tissues are 64.5 times greater than for a handkerchief (7) and use 4.5 times more water to produce (8). Online papers and books are taking hold, as we have heard from Mr Murdoch. Consumers will not be valuing paper products as highly as essentials such as food and clothing. Demand for paper will fall as the cost of necessities rise. The demand for any produce from the pulp mill will ultimately turn downwards. Anti Pulp Mill people should use handkerchiefs and actively seek out better alternatives to paper consumption.
On the other hand the value of the arable land currently wasted on e.nitens will become increasingly valuable for growing other products (9).
The road, communications, irrigation and shelter infrastructure is at best degraded wherever plantations are found. At worst they are totally destroyed. To feed the pulp mill, we are advised to expand this process and destroy the remaining means of supporting our real future. The United Nations has been well aware of the real future for our arable land for a long time.
‘David Nabarro, coordinator of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s High-Level Task Force on Global Food Security, cited under-investment among four challenges in the overall food security situation, along with the soaring prices, weather-related disasters such as droughts, floods and fires, and political changes and instability that are disrupting food supply chains.
“A point that we’ve been maintaining now for the last 30 years [is] that there is systematic and serious under-investment in agriculture and food security and that’s a problem now, but it’ll be a much greater problem as we move towards 2015.” ’ (10).
Tasmanian arable land is not needed for food production? Think again. Given climatic uncertainties and the increasing world-wide demand for food (and water), it would be very short-sighted to be diverted from the main game of survival by a few paper industry hacks that want to destroy our infrastructure, deep rip our topsoil, help themselves to our ground-water and leave us with the weeds, toxins and stumps. We would be crazy to kill the golden goose.
The Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Macquarie Group and Mr Le Strange might find their assets devalued without a pulp mill, but the majority of Tasmanians, and probably the world generally, will be far better off without it!
It is a sad day when a social mandate is needed as well as government approval for the mill. The government obviously does not represent the society. We, the people, clearly see insufficient return from a pulp mill for the costs we must bear, both going into the chipper and out the chimney. If public subsidy is to go to any industry, it should be done with a conscience – with a moral imperative as its motive, not cronyism and corruption.
References
1. Read Graeme Wells for the rubbery figures of the assessment application (http://oldtt.pixelkey.biz/index.php?/weblog/article/economic-effects-of-the-pulp-mill-a-tale-of-two-assessments/ ). Read the analysis of at best, the employment neutrality for the Brazilian twin mill (http://www.deudaecologica.org/publicaciones/Chapter4(81-124).pdf ), and the ‘value added’ contribution by Insider (http://oldtt.pixelkey.biz/index.php?/weblog/article/whats-in-the-black-box-mr-lestrange/ ). Read about the economic contribution made by plantations to the Waratah/Wynyard municipality (http://oldtt.pixelkey.biz/index.php?/article/preolenna-an-obect-lesson-in-economic-irrationality/ ).
2. Living on the Coast: Cradle Coast Regional Land Use Planning Framework 22010 – 2030 Consultation Draft. Cradle Coast Authority, accessed 25/03/2011, http://www.cradlecoast.com/documents/RegionalPlanningDecember2010ConsultationDraft.pdf With regard the provision of housing land, the onus is on residential lands to provide the buffer, to insulate the non-residential neighbours from any risks that the non-residents might create. No consideration is given to deliberate mismanagement by an industry such as forestry, despite the litany of examples. “Require housing land is to be separated from and is to buffer against impact on existing and potential adjacent non-residential use” P113, 4.7.j This sub-section continues a thread in the entire document for allowing economic land-use to be unfettered by the wishes of residents and the residential wishes of the people be fettered. My hunch is that local council bodies can only exert real power over residents, and not over corporations.
3, 4, 5. Hurter, Robert Will Non-woods Become An Important Fiber Resource For North America? World Wood Summit Proceedings 1998.
6. Covey G., Rainey T. and Shore D. The potential for bagasse pulping in Australia http://coveyconsulting.com.au/Documents/paper_gc_ds_potential_for_bagasse_in_aust.pdf
7. ABC Radio National The Handkerchief, By Design 16/03/2011.
8. Blackburn, Rebecca (2009) Tissues vs. Handkerchiefs, gmagazine, accessed 21/03/2011 http://www.gmagazine.com.au/features/1046/tissues-vs-handkerchiefs
9. De Schutter, Olivier UN Report on Agroecology and the Right to Food, accessed 23/03/2011 http://www.srfood.org/index.php/en/component/content/article/1174-report-agroecology-and-the-right-to-food
10. United Nations News Centre, UN food experts call for increased agricultural investment to offset soaring prices. 18/02/2011, accessed 21/03/2011, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=37570&Cr=food+prices&Cr1
