Going Paperless Is Bad For Trees
Posted by Michael Gardner on Fri, Dec 03, 2010 @ 03:32 PM
That fantastic headline on paperless is my artistic license on a press release from none other than, you guessed it, a paper company. http://bit.ly/guhk6K
It turns out that International Paper has come to the conclusion that if we all stop using paper we'll get rid of all the trees because the people that care for the trees will be put out of business - so please, for the good of the environment, keep printing! They admit you may think this is "counterintuitive" but they still plow forward clear cutting their way through logic (sorry, couldn't help myself).
Their argument is really quite simple, and if you've ever studied even economics 101 you'll understand where they are coming from. This is the age old Tragedy of the Commons argument.
In 1968 Garrett Hardin wrote a piece on medieval land ownership where the act of allowing the public to use common land for grazing land for cows results in the carrying capacity of the land to be exceeded, and ultimately the land to fail. (grossly simplified here - please forgive me) This, according to Hardin, proves that we are not good stewards of common property and therefore ownership is central to our health and well being.
For years this proposition has been debated and the central theme underwhich this argument is normally defeated is the difference between common property, and open access. But more about this later and what does this all have to do with trees?
Apparently, according to IP, those who currently harvest trees are the only ones who will truly care for the trees because their economic interests are aligned with the protection of forests for future harvesting. Is this a true statement? Certainly yes, well except for that whole "they are the only ones..." part. IP assumes that if the owners of the forest couldn't gain economic advantage from the cutting down of trees their only alternative would be to sell access to their land (open access) for other purposes that would require the removal of the trees such as argriculture. Is this a BIG assumption? Oh you bet it is.
The reality is that you can't simply draw a direct line from E-signatures to environmental sustainability, or from paperless loan approval to saving trees, but you can apply some common sense. Reducing the use of paper will reduce the demand for paper, which will trickle down to reduce the demand for trees. Full stop. Of course we'll then have to protect the forests from being used for other purposes otherwise saving the paper in the first place was all for not, but you can't use that as reason to not save paper!
I love releases like the one from IP because they really help us to have intelligent debates on these subjects. For example, IP states that U.S. tree farmers replant 3 to 4 times the number trees that they harvest. Does this mean that all "stewards of the forests" are equally "good" stewards? We'll leave that one for a debate on rainforest destruction and another day. So although the IP release is laughable, at least it will hopefully get you thinking.
One last thing - if you're going to bet on what's better for the planet, I really suggest you opt for paperless. It's the safe bet.