Clintonspeak Meets the Chain Saw : 400-year-old trees are doomed as some environmental groups cave in to ‘coercive harmony.’

If all runs smoothly along the lines of a deal hatched between the Clinton Administration and certain environmental groups, 400-year-old Douglas firs will start falling next spring in the national forests of the Pacific Northwest.

These ancient forests--enjoined from logging because they are habitat for the endangered spotted owl--face clear-cuts in the name of one of the most insidious catchwords of the Clinton era: consensus.

The very moment when, in early October, the environmental groups bowed their necks and gave the green light for the chain saws, Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy exulted that the deal ( surrender is the more accurate word) moves timber sales “away from the time-consuming and adversarial process . . . away from conflict and toward consensus.”

“Win-win” and “consensus” are the verbal soft toys of the Clinton era. They signal a sinister trend well described recently by Laura Nader, a professor of anthropology at UC Berkeley.

Nader first recognized what she calls the growth of “coercive harmony” in the rise of “alternative dispute resolution,” itself a response to the confrontation and litigiousness of the 1960s civil-rights movement.

“It is,” Nader says, “basically a movement against the contentious in anything and it has very strange bedfellows. It’s spread into different parts of American life. We’re talking about coercive harmony--an ideology that says if you disagree, you should really keep your mouth shut.”

Today, coercive harmony is in full tilt. Many grass-roots groups now proceed by “consensus” rules, which puts the meeting at the mercy of the last irreconcilable. Workers face steady erosion of their right to strike, taken from them in the name of alternative dispute resolution, compulsory arbitration or, as Nader has it, “coercive harmony.”

See how the pressure for consensus and coercive harmony has compelled 12 environmental groups--among them the Wilderness Society, National Audubon, California’s Northcoast Environmental Center and the Oregon Natural Resources Council--to fly in the face of their mandates and give the nod to clear-cuts of native and ancient forests.

The Clinton plan, developed in the wake of the springtime forest summit in Portland, Ore., sanctions destruction of up to 40% of the native and ancient forests in the Northwest. Careful examination of the draft plan shows fudged numbers on the so-called viability of endangered species, plus loopholes through which 500,000 logging trucks could happily drive every year for 10 years, the duration of the Clinton plan.

But by this time, despite public assertions to the contrary, some major environmental groups had been mired in the treacle of coercive harmony. The Administration called for gestures of goodwill, like release of 54 timber sales--potentially yielding 83 million board feet--in tracts of national forests previously protected by Judge William Dwyer, who ruled on the spotted owl suit, because logging on them was clearly illegal.

The government also tried hardball, threatening to urge Congress to pass legislation protecting its logging plans from legal review or challenge, a tactic many thought unlikely, since Clinton promised that his forest plan would abide by the law.

After some heart-searching, the 12 environmental groups caved in earlier this month, arguing that demonstrations of good faith and trust were necessary and that 83 million board feet was a relatively trifling amount.

The White House and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt said the Oct. 6 breakthrough has “the potential for release of substantially more timber.” First an inch, then a mile.

How much better it would have been if those environmental groups had stuck to their guns, flatly denounced the Clinton plan as a prescription for clear-cutting and gone public with a vigorous campaign for Option One, the best-case scenario developed after Portland, or even better.

There are signs of mutiny at the grass-roots level against coercive harmony. Four Oregon-based groups--including two local Audubon chapters and the Native Forest Council--are intervening before Judge Dwyer to stop the cave-ins on the injunctions. Some Sierra Club chapters--the Los Angeles chapter’s board is debating it this week--are pushing for a petition drive for a no-logging-on-public-lands policy, an initiative opposed by the club’s leadership.

Not so long ago, I heard a good phrase from a California environmental lawyer, Sharon Duggan, disgusted by the ravages of coercive harmony expressed in the continuing plunder of public resources. She called for “radical optimism”--the strength to take a stand and abide by it.