Forestry Task Force Follies
My NJ friends are having quiet private debates about a whole set of predicted problems they’ve been having with Senator Smith’s Forestry Task Force.
I was highly skeptical from the outset of that initiative, but I gave it a good faith chance and quickly confirmed my suspicions.
I resigned in protest after the Task Force not only failed to even consider my policy proposal, and instead then shut down discussion and issued a gag order (no press, no blogging).
The latest troubles some Task Force folks are wrestling with involve the ambiguity and lack of science, methods, and objective enforceable standards to implement (i.e. define, measure, monitor, and assess) the vague but good feeling concept of “stewardship”.
So, I thought folks might benefit from a NJ Field Guide to the term – here ya go!
Some NJ manifestations of “stewardship” (only a small sampling)
1. NJ Audubon has a “Corporate Stewardship Council” and their current “CEO” is a former Exxon “scientist”:
(John Cecil, the former head of NJ Audubon’s Corporate Stewardship Council, who led NJ Statewide efforts in cooperation with DEP to log NJ forests, is now Assistant Commissioner at DEP with jurisdiction over State Parks and Forests. He was provided a platform and made a 30 minute presentation to the Forestry Task Force’s kickoff meeting. Eileen Murphy, the former head of DEP’s Office of Science and Research, who has no academic background or experience in forestry, is now head lobbyist at NJ Audubon and a Co-Chair of Senator Smith’s Task Force. The terms “Regulatory capture” and “revolving door” and “self dealing” hardly begin to capture the corruption.)
2. NJ environmental groups tout their favorable relationships with power companies, who they claim practice “stewardship”:
3. Stewardship also has invaded and compromised the DEP’s Clean Water Act programs, diverted activists, and provided green cover:
4. Take a look at the practices that are reviewed and approved of as “stewardship” (reader warning: graphic content!)
5. Even Gov. Christie vetoed Senator Smith’s “stewardship” bill, which was a form of privatization:
6. “Young forests”, “healthy forests”, “habitat creation and restoration”, “seed tree treatments”, and “sustainable forestry practices” are all forms of “stewardship”. Take a look: (reader warning: graphic content)
7. This one explains itself in the title and needs no introduction:
8. DEP implements “stewardship” broadly and externally, and not only in forestry programs. The term is abused by the same self serving people (Catania/Duke) who form what I call NJ’s “Green Mafia” (reader warning: graphic content):
9. “Stewardship” is expansive – it even justifies the Neoliberal model: individual lifestyles, more consumption, market practices, voluntary local efforts:
10. “Stewardship” includes even road construction (more graphic content):
11. The current DEP forestry policies, plans, regulations, and programs are based on “stewardship”, but ignore climate.
Ironically, for the administration of a former Wall Streeter, the DEP even ignores their own findings about the economic value of preserving NJ’s forests::
I hope you all have a good day, now that you’ve seen real NJ “stewardship”!
Wolfe
[End Note: If you’ve gotten this far, and hit all the links and read all those illustrations, you probably know this for sure, but, because I’m just now reading this and enjoy her writing, I’ll include this as a pithy end note anyway:
Propaganda and other forms of narrative control are used to manufacture consent for status quo models of governance, economic and monetary systems, and foreign policy which benefit an elite few at the expense of the general population. ~~~ Caitlin Johnstone
Entities in the narrative world which threaten imperial narrative domination are attacked, smeared, marginalized and censored. ~~~ The Real World And The Narrative World
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