Eugene, Oregon -- Ed Whitelaw doesn’t look like an assassin. Tall and skinny, with rumpled hair, a friendly face, and an irrepressible laugh, he resembles a college professor much more than a hired gun.
But nice laugh or no, Mr. Whitelaw isn’t popular in some circles. Critics have called the economic consultant and part-time professor at the University of Oregon a “community assassin” and “Eat Trees Whitelaw.” When he testified at federal hearings in 1992, the U.S. Marshals Service assigned him a bodyguard.
Mr. Whitelaw’s heresy is to assert that timber no longer drives Oregon’s economy, and that its economic importance will continue to slide. He also urges policy makers to protect the state’s environment as a competitive edge for luring bright workers and different kinds of industries.
Mr. Whitelaw makes his big-picture points with strong images, aware that metaphors have power to capture public attention. One of his favorites, the “second paycheck,” explains the role that Oregon’s high quality of life plays in the state’s total economic picture.
“We said it is almost like we get two paychecks, one denominated in dollars and one denominated in forested mountains and clean streams and so on,” he says.
Mr. Whitelaw took his images and analyses to President Clinton and Vice-President Al Gore at the Forest Conference in Portland, Ore., in April. The subject was how to manage forests and timber harvests on federally owned land.
Proposals from the conference, which are expected soon, will consider the future of old-growth forests, endangered species such as spotted owls, and the thousands of families and communities that depend on timber for survival.
Mr. Whitelaw uses many indicators to back up his contentions. For example, he recently wrote in the University of Oregon’s alumni magazine that the number of workers in the state’s lumber and wood-products industry had declined by 17 per cent, or 13,500 jobs, from 1979 to 1989, while total employment in Oregon increased by 23 per cent, or 257,000 jobs, and that the trend had continued since then.
Oregon’s timber businesses suffered declines in the recession of the early 1980’s. Timber jobs disappeared later in the decade as the industry became more automated.
Mr. Whitelaw’s views have persuaded powerful supporters and aroused powerful opposition, much of it from people who work with forest products. They say timber is still vital to Oregon’s economy.
Some critics say Mr. Whitelaw underestimates how deeply a sharp decline in the timber industry would shake Oregon’s economy. Con H. Schallau, chief economist for the Forest Resources Group of the American Forest & Paper Association, says that although Oregon cities like Portland enjoy diverse economies, small lumber towns don’t, and those towns may find it hard to lure new industries.
The threat to logging communities is what led the former president of a coalition of farming, logging, and fishing groups, to call Mr. Whitelaw a “community assassin” and “Eat Trees Whitelaw.”
The “Eat Trees” moniker was inspired by Mr. Whitelaw’s own second-paycheck image.
“The bottom line is if you don’t get a paycheck, you don’t eat,” says Jackie Lang, spokeswoman for the Oregon Lands Coalition.
In person, Mr. Whitelaw thinks in complex paragraphs rather than mere sentences and is remarkably uninhibited. It’s more than just his laugh. At one point during an interview, as he was describing testimony in a court case, he suddenly slid off his upholstered chair and sat on the floor, stretching his blue-jeaned legs straight out in front of him.
Born to Quaker farmers in Kansas, Mr. Whitelaw grew up in a Chicago suburb and went to the University of Montana on what he calls “a whim.” He wanted to be a smoke-jumper, a forest-fire fighter, but he wound up majoring in political science, economics, and mathematics. He homed in on economics for his doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He accepted the job at the University of Oregon because he had always felt a kinship with the Pacific Northwest. As a youngster he read about the Oregon Trail and the Industrial Workers of the World, and scanned The National Geographic for pictures of the forests.
In addition to teaching courses at Oregon, including economics of the Northwest, Mr. Whitelaw owns a consulting firm, ECO Northwest, whose clients have included the Seattle Audubon Society and the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund.
Mr. Whitelaw says that representing environmental groups does not compromise the integrity of his analyses because he often gets peers from academe to review and criticize his arguments. He adds that his client list also includes businesses and governments that want him to analyze the environmental impact of their policies.
Mr. Whitelaw says that while he loves the forest, he doesn’t consider himself an environmentalist. His work has been a professional reaction to the decline he saw in timber’s economic role in the state.
“Despite what the timber industry may think of me, I don’t love the owl -- though I now have seen one,” he says.
While Mr. Whitelaw lives with the “assassin” reproof, he also enjoys the support of editorial writers and public speakers who pick up his ideas and images. One recent sign of affirmation was a decision by a Eugene hotel to change its lobby art from a picture of lumber saws to a mural of a forest. To a man who knows the power of images, it was a powerful sign of change.