Date Posted:20:57:29 03/09/08 Sun Author:Florence Harwood (Not happy Jan) Subject: Tasmania's forests
I offer these comments as I respect Mr McEwan's work deeply but I am extremely disappointed that Ian McEwan has been captured by a campaign that often disregards truth and facts.
Ian has recently visited Tasmania's forests with well Richard Flanagan and Bob Brown. I must say I am astonished that a writer of his sensibilities and intellect chose to accept such a one eyed view and did not seek any information about the other side of the forestry debate.
Then to involve the issue of climate change without the slightest nod to the findings of the Garnault and Stern reports on carbon sequestration through the forestry industry!
I adore McEwan's work and have read his novels with a sense of admiration and wonder. The most important duty an artist has, as Gunter Grass would say, is to speak out about what you observe in society. I do not and never would demur from that. But Gunter Grass never extolled speaking out in an unbalanced way and without some research to back up what Ian has said.
It would have been more helpful if he had qualified his comments by saying that he'd made observations in the presence of some very biased friends. Because that's all he did. He was shown something ("destruction") and chose to believe what was said about it. His reaction to it isn't exactly enlightened.
This is the same kind of tactic used by various anti forestry campaigners in Japan and overseas generally (in markets for Tasmanian forest products) who regularly show photos of "old growth trees" that have been "burnt" and misrepresent their location and their age (of course they're all old growth!). One group in particular was exposed for lying like this recently and they found themselves in a position where they had to apologise for lying and misleading the audience. I find that kind of tactic pretty disturbing.
The green groups make a great deal out of the terms pristine forests and old growth. I have been with well known campaigners in the Tasmanian forest and they haven't realised that what they are claiming to be old growth forest is actually regrowth after a wildfire in 1937. Their lack of knowledge on the subject is astounding.
What is happening is that they have captured the moral higher ground at the expense of facts, a propaganda war if ever there was one. And to be seen to defend the forestry industry in any way shape or form (including putting forward facts) is to be a rapist, a pillager, a completely unworthy person with indefensible views.
Is Ian aware that this campaign's persistence in claiming that these forests should not be touched by humans insults the Tasmanian Aboriginal community? They were effective land managers (using similar techniques to what is done now) long before anti forest campaigners decided that forests should be "wildernesses" which they usually define as having no people in them or "untouched by humans".
Other lies peddled around are that fires from forestry operations are burning down the Tasmanian world heritage area. However statistics from independent fire experts in Tasmania clearly indicate that if anything the fires into forestry operations from the world heritage area into forestry operations and not the other way around!
What I want to see considered by Ian is some facts. I would like Ian to come back to Tasmania in person and hear the other side of the debate. Only then should his views be respected. It's fine by me if that stage he still feels the the same way. But to show such disrespect to intellectual and scholarly principles of an objective examination of the facts puts him in a position where his credibility has been sorely undermined.
As I stated at the beginning, it's because I respect McEwan's work and capabilities so much that I've bothered to write in this way.
