Monday, April 18, 2011

Nashville-based company signs Canadian conservation agreement, but did they also get permission to pollute?

CTV reports that the L-P Corporation has signed a landmark conservation agreement that allows their vendors to hold them accountable for "sustainable harvesting":

Nine companies – from newspaper and magazine publishers to office supply retailers to consumer products companies – are part of the new Boreal Business Forum. The roundtable group will meet regularly to monitor progress made by 21 member companies of the Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC) who signed on to the conservation deal last year.

Among the goals of the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement are more sustainable harvesting practices and habitat protection for 72 million hectares of forest across the country.

FPAC companies – including .... Louisiana-Pacific Canada Ltd. – have committed to suspending logging operations on nearly 29 million hectares and implementing conservation plans for endangered woodland caribou.

Nine environmental organizations, including Greenpeace, Canopy and ForestEthics, also signed the three-year agreement. The groups pledged to suspend all “do not buy” campaigns against FPAC members, which they had waged for several years to draw attention to forest industry practices.

According to an Enclave commenter with the Boreal Forest Network, the L-P plant in Manitoba just got a license to remove its regenerative thermal oxidizer pollution controls. While the Nashville-based lumber corporation is giving to conservation, it seems to be taking away from clean air. Since L-P claimed that the cost of RTO-treated cleaner air was jobs, let's see how many quality jobs they produce.


UPDATE: Part of the logic of capital is that overextended companies like L-P cut jobs whenever their expansion outstrips their capacity to take in revenues. "Cutting costs" has a human toll: L-P cut jobs over the last two years in places like Texas, Maine, and Nova Scotia. There is no measure of the human cost on laid-off work force, but those cost-cutting measures seemed to have helped L-P get higher ratings by standards with no reference to human impact. Nevertheless, L-P never seems to given a second thought to the millions it pays for decades of naming rights to Nashville's pro football stadium. Advertising costs may be sacred.

1 comment:

  1. NAFTA was supposed to create jobs.

    And it did:

    In China, India, Mexico and other countries besides the U.S.

    The LP story is another instance of corporations creating legislation and spin to benefit them.

    ReplyDelete