[HN Gopher] Illegally logged wood from Cambodia likely ending up...
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Illegally logged wood from Cambodia likely ending up in U.S. homes
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 92 points
Date : 2024-11-18 17:31 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.mongabay.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.mongabay.com)
| cj wrote:
| If I just built a house, and if there were some definitive test
| to know the wood came from somewhere illegally, who would I sue?
|
| In the US, you would sue the person you paid (who would then sue
| the middleman company who sold them the wood, and so on down the
| chain until the chain eventually ends).
|
| It's interesting to think what a market would look like if we
| removed indemnity and limitation of liability from contracts
| (which allows liability to easily be passed down to vendors) in
| certain cases. I think that's how it works in certain other
| countries.
|
| E.g. what if the liability was solely with the person who sold me
| the wood (even if they're actually "innocent" and simply bought
| from a fraudulent distributor).
|
| I can easily see how it would help to keep all liability at the
| closest link to the consumer in the chain, but then again how
| realistic is it that any home builder is going to (reasonably) be
| able to do enough vetting of distributors and suppliers to know
| exactly how and where everything was made.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| You likely would not sue anybody, because you have not suffered
| any loss. Unless you are being fined by the local building
| department for having such materials in your home, or can
| demonstrate some kind of loss of resale value, which would
| probably be difficult.
|
| Enforcement of this kind of stuff has to happen much higher in
| the supply chain, e.g. by criminal prosecution of the importers
| for breaking the law, not civil claims by homeowners.
| cj wrote:
| It was more of a thought exercise.
|
| But yes, you could sue someone if there is false advertising
| happening.
|
| If I buy wood from someone saying everything is ethically
| sourced, and it's not, that's more than enough for a lawsuit.
|
| The "damage" I suffered is that now I need to rebuild my
| house because it doesn't use the wood I thought I bought.
| (Obviously no one would do that in practice, but that's how
| these lawsuits work)
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Note that the linked website is about wood used for
| flooring, so a house would not need to be rebuilt. Only
| pointing it out because I was wondering how it could
| possibly be economical for 2x4s used for construction to be
| imported into the US from Asia when the US and Canada has a
| robust timber industry.
|
| I would also guess new wood flooring installations has long
| constituted a very small proportion of flooring
| installation, with the more common material being some kind
| of plastic/laminate/synthetic or even tile.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I would guess this stuff is laminate/plywood. That is the
| typical wood floor these days. Only the top veneer is the
| hardwood or exotic wood.
|
| Actual solid wood plank floors would only be found in
| high-end custom homes now (though it was common in even
| middle-class tract/spec homes up until the 1970s or so,
| when wall-to-wall carpet became popular. For example my
| parent's suburban bi-level which was an extremely common
| middle-class house built in the 1960s has solid oak
| flooring except for the kitchen.)
| ekidd wrote:
| Solid oak was still surprisingly cheap as late as 2018.
| We picked up a bedroom's worth for $300 or so, and it
| will last as long the house stands. The installation is
| more expensive than the material.
|
| I know of at least one New England house with softwood
| pine floors from the 1850s that still look gorgeous. They
| needed a serious sanding about 50 years ago, and they
| have been revarnished a few times the half century since.
| Give 'em five good coats of varnish every 20 years, and
| put rugs on the high-traffic walkways, and they'll last
| for generations.
|
| Meanwhile, linoleum starts looking sketchy after a decade
| and carpet is just awful.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| > The installation is more expensive than the material.
|
| That's exactly the problem, isn't it? If any middle class
| person can afford high-quality wood flooring for their
| middle-class house, you need something exotic for your
| mansion. Right?
|
| You know what's crazy? I've got stacks of white oak and
| black walnut _firewood_. No furniture maker or woodworker
| will touch a felled tree in suburban or urban areas
| because it might have a nail somewhere in it. People will
| cut it into log lengths with a chainsaw and then beg
| others to come take it - as much as you can fit in your
| truck. For free.
|
| PS - unless I'm missing something, solid oak flooring is
| still in the same pricing ballpark as engineered wood
| flooring, often times a bit cheaper. It's the labor cost
| for installation and then finishing that makes it pricier
| overall?
| bluGill wrote:
| Only the trunk from a tree is useful for lumber. The
| branches have more wood overall, but they are firewood
| only because they twist so much.
| 1-6 wrote:
| We can live without exotic hardwood species splattering
| our floors. The look and feel of laminate/engineered wood
| can be quite good and it will only improve with time.
|
| I'm not a conservationist but I don't think it's proper
| to cut down trees only to waste it on flooring if the
| replenishment of the tree species cannot be accomplished.
|
| With that said, I think all floors should be made out of
| bamboo.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| > Meanwhile, linoleum starts looking sketchy after a
| decade and carpet is just awful.
|
| Linoleum is a high quality product made from natural
| materials, you're thinking of vinyl flooring.
| Marsymars wrote:
| > If I buy wood from someone saying everything is ethically
| sourced, and it's not, that's more than enough for a
| lawsuit.
|
| I don't expect most contractors to have any wording around
| ethical sourcing, and I expect they'd balk at me trying to
| add an ethical sourcing guarantee to our contract.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| I would assume there'd be an actionable warranty of
| merchantability attached to the sale. The wood can't be fit
| for sale if the seller doesn't have a legal claim to the
| product.
| kbelder wrote:
| If you sell your house, would the new owner be able to sue you,
| then?
| cj wrote:
| In NYS, you can sue the seller mostly based on what
| representations/disclosures they made at the time of sale [0]
|
| If you disclose it as a material defect, then no they can't
| sue you.
|
| [0] https://dos.ny.gov/system/files/documents/2024/03/dos-161
| 4-f...
| tadfisher wrote:
| From what I understand through cursory Googling, trading in
| illegally-harvested timber is a federal crime in the United
| States [1], and it's a strict liability, meaning everyone in
| the chain is subject to penalty via law enforcement. I don't
| know if unknowingly receiving illegal timber without penalty
| gives you standing to sue.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacey_Act_of_1900
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| I am no expert but I imagine "I hired a licensed contractor
| to handle this" would provide decent coverage for the home
| owner? Maybe I'm too naive.
| munk-a wrote:
| Often times it isn't as that can be abused by bad actors
| that attempt to insulate themselves from liability by
| foisting it off on others. I think in a lot of cases
| markers of intent may be useful here - if you specifically
| request a class or species of wood that is restricted in
| logging you'd likely be held liable - "Oh I had assumed
| this specific rare tropical wood would be ethically
| sourced"... while as if you'd just requested a hardwood and
| contractor happened to source an illegally sourced wood the
| liability would likely be lessened.
|
| In this particular case it's actually particle board so end
| customers were likely completely unaware it was illegally
| sourced.
| _heimdall wrote:
| If I were on a federal jury attempting to convict a home
| owner that had no direct knowledge of where the raw
| materials were sourced from, there's no way in hell I'd
| vote guilty.
| jstanley wrote:
| Doesn't that mean that even the end customer is subject to
| liability via law enforcement?
|
| So they're actively incentivised not to bring attention to
| it.
| throwup238 wrote:
| Yes but there is an intent component so only if they didn't
| exercise "due care." A consumer might be liable if they buy
| something obviously illegally harvested like Cuban mahogany
| (unless it's very old stock that predates the ban) from
| some rando on Craigslist but if they're buying wood from a
| lumberyard or hardware store, they're likely in the clear
| (IANAL).
| renewiltord wrote:
| So if I find illegal wood used in my house, I shouldn't
| report it because I'll be in big trouble? Yeah, okay. I'll
| play dumb.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| What were the damages you sustained? That's probably the key
| question you must ask yourself. Whoever is responsible for
| those damages would be the target you should go after.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| Complex questions. Everyone intelligent has their own journey
| to, "People have agency, and obeying laws is cultural."
| jessetemp wrote:
| > E.g. what if the liability was solely with the person who
| sold me the wood (even if they're actually "innocent" and
| simply bought from a fraudulent distributor).
|
| Why would the liability stop with them and not you? If only the
| last person in the chain is liable, the shouldn't it be you who
| is sued by the people whose land was exploited for lumber?
| sailfast wrote:
| Because you didn't order the illegal Acacia?
|
| It's not like elephant ivory - the wood can come from a
| number of places and look about the same. As an end user you
| asked for "wood floors" and you got wood floors, and it was
| up to the supplier to select the wood used in the flooring,
| while the supplier is also lying about the source so all
| parties post-supplier have deniability here, no?
| hammock wrote:
| >If I just built a house, and if there were some definitive
| test to know the wood came from somewhere illegally, who would
| I sue?
|
| Or: who could sue you, to return the wood?
| efitz wrote:
| Or, who could bust in your door with a dozen SWAT team
| members at 5am some morning and drag your family out into the
| front yard in their pajamas, terrified, making them sit for
| hours. All because you tried to do the right thing.
| efitz wrote:
| IANAL but self-reporting would not likely benefit you; I would
| try to be as ignorant as possible about the wood type and its
| source. Knowing and not reporting might also be a crime.
| Unfortunately much of the US federal bureaucracy is more
| interested in prosecution than in justice.
| dghughes wrote:
| In August (2024) the US increased the softwood tariff coming from
| Canada from 8% to 15% so I'd say US wood corp buyers are
| desperate for cheaper wood.
|
| It's a big place here in Canada and the crown (aka the gov) owns
| all the land not owned by private owners, First Nations peoples,
| corporations do not. The US government hates that so they set a
| tariff.
|
| Funny there are no US tariffs on Canadian oil drilled for on
| crown land though. Even Trump said no to that. lol
| dessimus wrote:
| We'd much rather give away our tax dollars to the military-
| industrial complex to go get the oil than risk consumers having
| to pay more at the pump on tariffs.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| >give away our tax dollars to the military-industrial complex
| to go get the oil
|
| Two problems with that line of thinking:
|
| 1) US is a net exporter of oil, so why engage in dastardly
| invasions to get it from elsewhere?
|
| 2) Talk of military industrial complex is often backed u by
| how much the US spends on defence. However, absolute dollar
| amounts are a really dumb way to compare defence budgets.
| They ignore country sizes, GDP sizes and purchasing power.
| Now, if you compare defence spending per person as a
| percentage of GDP, accounting for purchasing power parity,
| you get a much less flawed way to compare between countries.
| In other words, it's not enough to compare $100 of spending
| between US and Russia, for example, without accounting for
| the difference between what $100 buys in the US vs Russia,
| and how much of a person's annual output that $100 amounts
| to. US cracks the top 10 on that metric BTW, but just about.
| _heimdall wrote:
| If you want to go into that level of detail to compare
| relative military spending, there are going to be other
| factors to consider. Its a huge rabit hole trying to
| normalize data between countries with entirely different
| currencies, economics, political structures, etc.
|
| For example, the US has the benefit of printing money in
| ways that other countries don't. I'm not even sure how
| you'd adjust military spending to account for the benefit
| of printing fiat as the world reserve currency, its more
| like you're playing a game that no other country is allowed
| to play.
| mlindner wrote:
| This type of argument is frankly outdated. The US is net
| exporters of crude. We only import because of structural
| issues (for example for California it's cheaper to ship in
| oil as they refused to allow a pipeline to be built, or for
| example shipping in heavier crude that's cheaper and easier
| to make margin on in more advanced US refining plants).
| digitalsurgeonz wrote:
| what isn't ending up in the west ?
| bregma wrote:
| The west's garbage?
| ars wrote:
| Not sure if you were being sarcastic, but garbage is handled
| locally. Some garbage is sold to other countries, but they
| pay for it because they want it, it's not dumped on them.
|
| Zero garbage is just sent elsewhere to be dealt with in some
| random way.
| aorloff wrote:
| Don't you mean we pay them to take it ?
| ars wrote:
| No, I don't mean that, because that does not happen. If
| other countries want recycling they pay to buy it.
| hadlock wrote:
| Cambodia is mostly exporting their sand to Singapore as part of
| land reclamation projects. Environmentalists are super mad
| about it because the easiest sand to harvest is from sensitive
| Cambodian wetlands, which then gets shipped about 4 days south
| to Singapore.
| kristopolous wrote:
| Somewhat related, I just listened to this series about Cambodian
| art smuggling during the Khmer Rouge days.
| https://dynamitedoug.com/
|
| I hope to visit Cambodia someday (I was about to do it in 2 weeks
| but then somehow I got tricked into taking a new job :-\\).
| legitster wrote:
| > "They [Nature Flooring] themselves don't know what it is that
| they're selling," a timber industry insider told Mongabay, adding
| that minimal testing is done to check the species or origin of
| the wood.
|
| > When contacted, AHF told Mongabay in an emailed response that
| it "does not use any illegally harvested wood products." "We have
| a rigorous supplier vetting and compliance program to verify all
| wood products are legally sourced. Any inferences to the contrary
| are simply not true," AHF said.
|
| There's a bit of a he-said/she-said thing going on here. It seems
| like it would be pretty easy to verify samples whether the wood
| came from a plantation or not.
| beambot wrote:
| It's double-speak. Neither company cares; they're just relying
| on plausible deniability while burying their heads in the sand.
| They will change only if there's sufficient pressure
| (financial, regulatory, social or some combination thereof).
| luxuryballs wrote:
| once the lumber becomes my house I'm calling it successfully
| laundered
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| I could see importing some exotic hardwood from Cambodia (if they
| have any), but why is is cost effective to make shitty plywood
| with anything other than cheap locally sourced timber ?!
| legitster wrote:
| It's not construction plywood - it's manufactured flooring. So
| you need fancy hardwoods for the veneer.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| This reminds me of the rampant fraud in the labeling and sourcing
| of seafood. See https://spu.edu/about-spu/press-
| room/Press/delgado-salmon-mi... For a recent example
| silexia wrote:
| We pass all these struct labor and environmental rules in the US,
| then just import goods made with far worse labor and
| environmental treatment. This is why we need high tariffs.
| TylerE wrote:
| Doubling the price of everything we buy is gonna be just GREAT
| for the economy. What do you mean my salary isn't also
| doubling?
| oceanplexian wrote:
| Like the parent I have a hard time processing the narrative
| that environmentalism is an existential issue except when we
| need cheap Asian goods to undercut American workers.
|
| I guess it's a dead horse though since clearly this kind of
| cognitive dissonance has handed all branches of US government
| to those advocating for tariffs and the same populist
| sentiment is well on its way in the EU.
| TylerE wrote:
| I don't see how doubling the price of a product that will
| STILL be cheaper does anything except drive inflation.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| I have family in the furniture industry. Most of these
| goods imported from overseas are only 10-20% than
| American made with the side effect of trashing the
| environment in the race to the bottom. 20 years ago it
| was all made in the USA. Building a coffee table is not
| like building a chip fab.
| triceratops wrote:
| People will buy less of it. This is literally the
| degrowth approach for climate change mitigation put into
| practice.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Maybe we need the political will to _credibly threaten_ with
| high tariffs, but you could scratch the same itch by sequencing
| the lumber 's genome on receipt and checking it against a
| registry of plantation-grown species maintained by companies
| known to have paid for whatever environmental auditing we
| require of our lumber imports.
|
| Trying to do that with tariffs creates a situation where only
| domestic companies are able to break the rules--which of course
| they're going to do domestically. I don't want to buy things
| that are harming Cambodia, but substituting them with things
| that are harming America is not any better.
| greenavocado wrote:
| I find it somewhat ironic and hilarious that Americans depend on
| wood from across an ocean when Canada is right there and is
| covered by trees on at least 80% of its land
| vinay427 wrote:
| Canada is the largest foreign source of wood for the US, so I'm
| not sure where the irony is. They don't grow much acacia or
| eucalyptus as far as I'm aware.
|
| https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/wood-products...
| nsxwolf wrote:
| 10 years ago someone would be proposing how the blockchain could
| solve this problem.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| Don't give them any ideas.
| usrnm wrote:
| That's clearly stupid. What we should do is use AI, this is a
| much better idea
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| I just sold an NFT of this comment.
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