Alston Chase

The focus of In a Dark Wood is the “old growth” forests of the Pacific Northwest, which have become the Alsace-Lorraine of American timber industry and environmentalism.


The author’s capsule biography sounds a little like the Unabomber’s; Alston Chase is a retired philosophy professor who moved to a cabin in Montana. (Dr. Chase might think the comparison apt, since he’s written two books on Theodore Kaczynski). This did not bode well for a book on this topic, and I was prepared for the standard radical environmentalist polemic by an ivory-tower academic. To my surprise, the book is more than fair; in fact, it comes down heavy on the environmentalists - more of that anon.


The subtitle of this edition is “The Fight over Forests and the Myths of Nature” and Dr. Chase spells out what he thinks those myths are right in the introduction:


Myth #1: There is a balance of nature.

Myth #2: Nature can be “healthy” or “unhealthy’.

Myth #3: In the beginning, all was perfect.

Myth #4: Nature is sacred.


So far, so good; although I’m always suspicious of someone who agrees with me. Dr. Chase then sets out his Dramatis Personae; various government employees, timber industry people, and environmentalists. And finally (the book has an introduction, a preface, and a prologue) we get started. Background first: short histories of the US timber industry, the US relevant US government agencies (Forest Service, BLM, Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, EPA), the science of ecology (specifically the concepts of “ecosystem” and “succession”, and philosophy. This last might seem out of place, but the author is a philosophy professor; I found the discussion of teleology, the Aristotelian idea that everything has a telos, or proper place and function, particularly insightful. The theme of teleology misapplied to biology is what drives the entire book; we’ve all seen and read countless classroom presentations and TV specials about “ecosystems” where every organism has its “proper place” but where the slightest disturbance (inevitably caused by humans) causes the entire thing to crash. This causes the first, second and third of Dr. Chase’s myths. Unfortunately the book is weak here; it’s not a scientific text but I’d still like to see some more explication of exactly why the ecosystem concept and “climax” communities are at odds with modern biology.



Then comes the Endangered Species Act, with an interesting “behind the scenes” discussion of the way the law came to be. The authors, and probably all the people who voted for the bill, thought it was going to protect cute fuzzy animals, and had no idea how it would be used in such cases as the snail darter and Furbish lousewort. The Act, as it exists now, incorporates the state of the art in biology as it was in about 1840; by referencing species, subspecies and populations to be “protected” it embraces the idea of “kinds” that Creationists love. In a delightfully catty paragraph, Dr. Chase quotes one of environmentalism’s saints, Paul Ehrlich, dismissing the ideas of “species” and “subspecies” - the later with particular venom. Once again, though, it would have been nice to get a little more hard science on what exactly a “species” is, and how taxonomy works.


By now, we’re a third of the way through the book, and it’s time for the Greek tragedy to start. Subsequent chapters each take a different point of view - loggers, Earth First!ers, lumber company executives, government employees. (There probably should be a chapter from the point of view of the spotted owl, which is what everything revolves around). In the introduction, Dr. Chase says that the story has no heroes or villains; all the same he seems to come down hard on radical environmentalists, Charles Hurwitz, who engineered a takeover of the Pacific Lumber Company, and various government scientists who rolled over and played dead instead of speaking out against the biological idiocy of the Endangered Species Act. Loggers and their families are the good guys; blue collar Americans just trying to make a living at a dangerous job.


Chase’s conclusions are gloomy. Thousand of loggers are out of work and the economy of the area is devastated. The price of lumber has gone up, and much is imported from other countries with less than ideal forestry laws. The proliferation of dead old trees is a fire catastrophe waiting to happen. The Endangered Species Act continues to be applied as if the last 150 years of evolutionary biology never happened, and has become a “watermelon” law, allowing increasing intrusion into peoples’ lives. (It’s perhaps significant that the hardcover edition has a harsher phrase in the subtitle: “...the Rising Tyranny of Ecology” rather than “...the Myths of Nature”.) The protection of “old growth” trees has hurt organisms that depend on patchy environments (it’s particularly ironic that the Northern spotted owl is now believed to prefer new growth rather than old growth.) About 85% of wildlife biologists work for federal or local government; studies attempting to define “ecosystems” keep failing to find them, but the concept has been enshrined to the point that failure is explained away as “human disturbance”. Environmental groups keep expanding what they want, up to and including the elimination of private property and the evacuation of most of the western US.


So what’s not to like? Well, for one thing, as I’ve already mentioned, Chase’s science is pretty weak; I don’t mean it’s wrong, but a lot of concepts critical to his argument are explained poorly: “ecosystem” (or the nonexistence thereof), “species” and “climax” (as a stage in biological succession). (His physics is even worse; at one point he describes the motion trigger in the bomb that almost killed activist Judi Bari as having a positive current in one loop of wire and a negative current in the other). There’s a whole, unfortunate, chapter drawing strained analogies between fascism and the environmental movement. In a book that advertises itself as even-handed, logging communities are portrayed as neatly painted rows of well-kept houses while an “Earth First!” gathering is:


“Bare-chested men and women sat in empowerment circles holding hands and sharing thoughts about art for the earth, music for the earth, and the earth for the earth, as others squatted in the lotus position on the dusty ground seeking nirvana, and bearded men and floppy-breasted women sat in clusters under trees, strumming guitars or singing about the rape of the earth and the virginity of owls.”



While I’m perfectly willing to believe this, I wonder if Dr. Chase was there taking notes and what you might find if you spent several Saturday nights in a logging town bars.


There are also several strange references to Isaac Asimov and Loren Eisley. Asimov’s Foundation series is described several times as providing inspiration to the radical groups, which I’ve never heard elsewhere and which seems highly unlikely. Similarly, Loren Eisley is grouped with Barry Commoner as guru of the early environmental movement. Eisley is a naturalist but also very much a humanist; some of his books and essays (for example, The Star Thrower) are critical of some ways people interact with nature but Eisley never adopted the antiDarwinian, antihuman stance of the radical activists.

Four and a half stars - well worth a place on the shelf and plenty of material for future reading.… (more)

"Ideas have consequences." - Richard M. Weaver

With his book, In a Dark Wood, Alston Chase has written a story about the ecological struggle over the forests, but in doing so he has also developed the history of an idea. The idea is really many ideas, incorporating questions about the definition of nature, the science of ecology and the question of eco-systems -- just what are they and what should we do about them.

"It is a tale without heroes or villains, in which the bad guy isn't a person at all but an idea"(p xi)

His story begins with people, from John Muir and Henry David Thoreau to the eco-revolutionaries of the seventies and eighties. But the story also begins with the question: What is Nature? For it is the battle over nature that guides the narrative and the history of the ecological movement. His focus is primarily on the forests of Northwestern United States, and the battles to protect "endangered" species like the Spotted Owl. In doing so he provides a tremendous amount of detail about incidents that, like a mosaic of tiles, fit together to create a story. But the battle is also philosophical and political. Alston points out the unintended consequences of ideas that are not fully understood, of actions that are based on questionable science or faulty and limited studies, and the irrational passions that drove many of the people in the story, both good and bad, to take unreasonable actions. Ultimately it becomes a story about those who insist on determining the one way that all must follow to do what is good for man, forgetting the folly that has occurred throughout history when that has been attempted in the past.

For Chase his ne plus ultra was a focus on people and ideas, devising a book interesting to all who are stimulated by the history of ideas and the actions men take. It also allowed him to be balanced in his approach, emphasizing science and carefully pointing out what we do know and, more importantly, what we do not know.… (more)