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Heath Combs

GREENTHOUGHTS #16

“A man watches his pear-tree day after day, impatient for the ripening of the fruit. Let him attempt to force the process, and he may spoil both fruit and tree. But let him patiently wait, and the ripe pear at length falls into his lap!”

Abraham Lincoln

FIXING A HOLE

The quote above might well describe how we got into this whole financial mess we’re watching unfold.

We’re watching a world governed by crisis. It is supposed to be the other way around. The role of government is to mitigate risks and help society avoid crisis.

This often is lost in its present structure. It’s hard to imagine (as some would have us believe) that in a decade no one saw the risks building. Many did.

Among them America’s most famous investor, Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett. Go figure why no one listened.  To bad Britney Spears or Paris Hilton weren’t economists and saw this coming. We certainly would have known about it.

As this credit crisis spread with greater ferocity, it turned limited-government zealots into converts fast. The principle that government inclusion in our markets is unnecessary changed quickly.

Bulldozing massive amounts of taxpayer money to fill a liquidity hole and quickly increasing our debt was en vogue like never before this October.

The House and Senate were forced to vote on sensitive legislation just a few weeks before elections. Many surely would have preferred to wait until after elections to make the decision rather than to risk their incumbency.

That’s too bad. You either have two years or six years to figure it out if you don’t want to be pressured into those kinds of decisions late in a cycle.

They were faced with questions of conscience, and at least for the first bill, you didn’t see everyone voting along party lines. I will likely vote against at least one incumbent in my district because of what I’ve seen in the last month.

Our government is a public trust and I think they forget that sometimes.

What does all this have to do with green thoughts? I notice a similarity to voices ringing the alarm on environmental issues.

Tom Friedman, a columnist for the New York Times, recently said he’d thought our political system was one designed by geniuses so that it could be run by idiots.

We should not forget that we may be proceeding through a critical time for our planet.

Will we decry poor leadership during our next crisis if we enabled it?

Probably.

That we watched western civilization change on a dime in a matter of weeks - not years, is proof that our government, our society and our principles do not have to change at a snail’s pace to progress.

WATCH WHERE YOU SIT

If you’ve been following the newsletter you know that we wrote several months ago about the adoption by our government in the Farm Bill of amendments to the Lacey Act.
The legislation created a requirement for importers to declare the species and country of origin on any plant or plant product, including wood, in their products.

This week’s Lacey Act story is mainly about enforcement being pushed to next year.

The amendments were intended to protect forests worldwide from deforestation and illegal wood products from entering the United States. Illegally harvested wood is sold below market price or is wood cut in violation of treaties, laws and regulations.

If this legislation were to be structured as strictly as the new California Air Resources Board formaldehyde emissions standard, it could be very challenging for our industry.
On another level these amendments make industries more accountable for the immense use of resources required to fuel the last decade’s import boom.

I’d file it under items to keep an eye on. Import declarations for wood furniture are supposed to take effect next year.

If you would like to read a story about some of the people behind this law, this is a fantastic recent piece from the New Yorker, and it even names some factories in our industry.

Interestingly, one of the big uses for illegally harvested wood is toilet seats.

GOOD NEWS

Here’s some good news for our industry. I’m just happy that this is even out there and you can read about it in the newsletter. The International Furnishings and Design Association is offering a $1,000 scholarship for a green focused student for the first time next year.

Here’s a quote from the story:

“It was evident from our numerous applications for current EF (Educational Foundation) scholarships that today’s students are concerned about the environment and interested in applying green/sustainable aspects in their design projects, now and in their future careers,” Linda Mariani, chairwoman of the Education Foundation.

She added:

“We felt it was time to add this scholarship to our family of grants and scholarships.”

The scholarship will be offered for the first time in 2009 and will be awarded to a full- or part-time student focusing on the field of sustainability.

Congratulations to the IFDA. This is a great way to encourage sustainable design in our industry. Maybe we can get more corporations, foundations and universities already involved with our industry to do something similar.

Best,
Heath