What are we waiting for?

Flyin' saucers, rock 'n' roll

Thursday, December 2, 2021

NEWSBOY contents:

• Ukiah gets with the times

• 30 x 30

• Flying saucers & Yogi Berra

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Getting with the times

Members of the Ukiah Equity and Diversity Committee voted to adopt a draft of an Equity Action Plan. The plan is a product of Ukiah’s 11-member Equity and Diversity Committee formed by the City of Ukiah. 

Ukiah council members previously gave unanimous support to create the committee about 14 months ago. 

Committee members have since  written into the plan six goals for the City of Ukiah. 

Equity and diversity goals from a draft of the plan released before the meeting:

Goal 1. Create and sustain a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace and workforce that reflects the diverse community we serve. 

Goal 2. Eliminate internal and external barriers to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion within the systems of our organization.

Goal 3. Recruit, retain, and advance a diverse community of staff that reflect the diversity of the community we serve.

Goal 4. Identify and engage underrepresented communities in which to retain, expand, develop, and implement programs.

Goal 5. Instill diversity, equity, and inclusion as essential core elements of policy-making, accountability, and delivery of City services.

Goal 6. Ensure accountability in the implementation of goals and assessment of progress toward outcomes

Wednesday night there was a special meeting where the draft was discussed. The plan then goes before city council members.

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What are we waiting for?

An executive order Joe Biden issued in the early weeks of his presidency is helping to shape the way government and the climate-concerned talk about the issue of a changing climate. 

“This order builds on and reaffirms actions my Administration has already taken to place the climate crisis at the forefront of this Nation’s foreign policy and national security planning, including submitting the United States instrument of acceptance to rejoin the Paris Agreement.”

A section in the president’s order identifies a desire  to conserve 30 percent of land in America by 2050. Biden signed the executive order in January. The Fed’s also published Conserving and Restoring America the Beautiful. 

Even here in Mendocino County,  climate change vocabulary grew to include the phrase “30-x-30” in the ongoing debate about how to manage Jackson Demonstration State Forest. If you listened to or read the comments made asking for the scientific review of JDSF you would have heard “30-x-30” at least a few times. 

In the age of mega-fires we can count on fire scorching what is left of our trees each summer. Preservation of our ecosystems needs to be a matter of national security. 

When life has literally been baked out of the land and the soil,  it is not only a loss of Mother Nature, it is a loss of our natural resources and the security that they provide for us. Mendocino County in no particular order is wine, weed and timber. There is also tourism and the local manufacturers that survive here. 

Wine grapes and the value of timber vie for the top agricultural commodity in the Mendocino County economy from year to year. An annual ag report by the county does not mention cannabis. People do like to taste fancy wines and on the other hand there is a great working class history connected to many vineyards in the county.  Timber, love it or hate it, should be considered the pride of the working class in our area. If you never worked near logging yourself, you probably have met someone who spent years or even decades working in the woods. 

California, in response to 30-x-30, published a draft of “Natural and Working Lands Climate Smart Strategy” in Oct. for public comment. In that document the state approached climate change in terms of equitable solutions, justice for indigenous people and land conservation. Mendocino County falls in the North Coast region of the state proposal. The plan warns of a bleak future for  North Coast ecosystems. The plan tells us sad news--that we will experience more heat, more fire, more variations of precipitation, less snow, higher seas and loss or even disappearance of wet habitats. 

Screenshot of a list taken from the state’s report.

At this time the document has little to say about the ability of industry to help fight climate change. Industry can help fight climate change because that is where people have the know-how, the banking, the heavy equipment and expertise in getting permits. Loggers will help to restore our forests because they have the know-how and possess the means to get whatever wood needs to be removed out of the woods. At the same time,  Central Valley farmers must consider buying into a large-scale biochar program. Think about it: Together, the timber interests and the big agricultural interests can restore forests, build healthy soil, retain more water in the soil and hopefully ween our food system off of chemical fertilizers. 

Forest technology has come a long way, although real men can still make money with old heavy equipment. In the thick woods of Ore., just outside the small city of Corvallis, an event called the Pacific Logging Congress happens every three years.. At the PCL you can see loggers taking career educational courses, school children learning about the big machines that work in the big woods and machinery from the leading edge of forest technology. The focus there is more on the new machinery. Swedish company Ponsse brought machinery to the show that operated in a nearby stand of Douglas fir, severing trees, cutting short logs to length, stacking them in tidy piles as it repelled down a steep slope safely tethered to a steel cable. 

A Ponsse forwarder ready-for-action at the 2018 Pacific Logging Congress in Corvallis, Ore.

A high-tech machine like a Ponsse harvester may sound futuristic or unrealistic, but these machines and ones like them are active in the western states and around the world. A trade publication reported that timber company Green Diamond had three Ponsse sides active on its timber lands at the time of a 2019 article. The wheels turn in your head when you see these machines working. And then there was the EZ-UP tent and the man who was showing video of a mobile biochar machine to passersby at the PCL. Imagine an industrial-strength engineered biochar machine that could operate temporarily for the duration of a fuel reduction or woodland restoration project. These things have been invented, you know. 

What are we waiting for, Mendocino County? 

NEWSBOY/Zack Cinek can be reached at 707-613-0369 or newsboy.zack@gmail.com.

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