On Fri, 30 Mar 2018 17:59:03 -0700 (PDT), jbeattie
wrote:

I think the forest products industry wants to make wood the new steel.

Rather than rebranding wood, we should get our materials scientists to
develop some process that turns plastic bags filled with dog **** into
some super-material. Or maybe old tires or nuclear waste. Why aren't
we squeezing old newspapers into some product stronger than titanium?
I'm not excited about finding new ways to process trees.

Old tech still has money to spend to try to hang on just a little longer
before they are replaced- logging, oil, coal, etc. None of those are
actually sustainable any longer, despite the attempts at greenwashing.
Their profitability advantage continues to shrink and the companies that
utilize those old techs will move away as other options make more
financial sense. Oil companies should long ago have repositioned
themselves as multi-source energy companies, but they opted to double
down on what they know how to do and seek government protection from
new, threatening technologies. That's why your car still only gets 35
mpg on the highway and much worse in town. My 1990 Volvo got just
barely worse mileage than my 2017 Subaru (although my Dieselgate Jetta
got 52 mpg on the highway and 36 mpg in town). BTW, if you want to know
where the "deep state" really is, look no further than entrenched
industries with money to spend on buying influence.

Locally almost all coal-based electricity production has been replaced
by natural gas and wind because the total cost of production is equal or
lower over time and therefore profits are better. Logged and milled
wood as such has been replaced for many applications in the construction
industry by engineered materials. Cheaper, lighter, easier to work with
on site, can be made from recycled wood or plastics, made from smaller
fast growing species, etc.