On the recordApril 5, 1994
Well, first, one of the reasons that the cost of lumber has gone up so much is that we had an explosion in building, because interest rates went down so low, the lowest we've had in over 20 years. And we drove them down real low last year with the deficit reduction plan. And there was a big spurt in building, so there was a shortage in lumber, so the price of lumber went up. That's always going to happen. It is true that we've had to cut way back on clearing timber in the so-called old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest because there wasn't nearly as much timber up there as we had thought, and it takes forever and a day to grow those tress, something like 200 years a tree. So what we've tried to do, sir, I guess, will both help and hurt the situation. We have adopted a ceiling for timber cutting that is lower than the ceilings of the past. That will hurt, from your point of view. What will help is, we have moved aggressively to actually start cutting those trees again. It's been years, as you know, it's been years since any trees at all have been cut up there because it's all been tied up in environmental lawsuits in Federal court. So what we're doing, we just got permission to start cutting trees, and we're trying to move so that we can cut the trees we can without losing the old growth forests. Only 10 percent of the old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest is still up there. And I don't think that in good conscience and legally we can allow it all to be destroyed. But we can clear more timber now if we can just keep pushing ahead and get these things out of the courts and back on the land where they belong. Bosnia and North Korea [Ms. Hindrew introduced a participant in Charlotte who asked why North Korea should take U.S. threats to seize nuclear sites seriously, in view of the recent downsizing of the military and the perception of waffling on using military force in the former Yugoslavia.]
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