Earlier, we told you about a misleading study released by the Dogwood Alliance in partnership with the Center for Sustainable Economy that misrepresented the forest products industry in North Carolina.
It’s no surprise that the anti-forestry activist group Dogwood Alliance, which is based in Asheville, North Carolina, is party to a report that criticizes the forest products industry in the state. But why is the Center for Sustainable Economy (CSE) involved?
As it turns out, the CSE is not a North Carolina group – it’s based just outside of Portland, Oregon, on the other side of the country. The CSE explicitly bills itself as an organization that conducts research and “straddles the divide between a think tank and a do tank.”
The phrase “do tank” here is important: It makes clear that the CSE is not an unbiased, fact-based research organization. It’s an activist group with a clear anti-forestry agenda.
In fact, the North Carolina report isn’t the first time the CSE has weighed in against the forest products industry. In 2017, the CSE conducted a similar study in Oregon, and shockingly, found the same result.
It’s no surprise that since first launching in the 1990s, CSE always finds against the forest products industry. CSE’s CEO, John Talberth, who also happened to be the author of the North Carolina study, has been suing to stop logging for decades, going all the way back to 1998. In the mid 2000s, CSE sued to stop the U.S. Forest Service from allowing timber sales on National Forest Lands. Talbert also published a book in 1999 against logging.
So unlike what its name suggests, CSE is actually not an organization of nonbiased economists or scientists, but an activist group pursing an anti-forestry agenda.