Greenough, MT September 2011

We’re all familiar with the old saying, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade”—a phrase popularized by that eternal optimist, Dale Carnegie.

There’s a little Dale Carnegie in Larry Lipson, an insightful entrepreneur who is taking a voracious byproduct of climate change and making it into useful tool that is both enlightening and proves something positive can come from something almost everyone considers bad.

The antagonist of this story is the mountain pine beetle, a critter only 1/8th to 1/3rd inch long that is rapidly devouring millions of acres of prime pine forests in the U.S. and Canada. Mountain pine beetles are not a new phenomenon. They have existed throughout history as part of the ecological cycle of the forests in which they live.

Enter climate change. Forest ranges inhabited by the beetles normally have bitterly cold winters that control the population of beetles—keeping the balance of nature. As winters have warmed, the number of beetles has simply exploded.

Vast tracts of forest with deep green pine needles have turned a sickly red—an indication the mountain pine beetle has killed its host and is ready to move on. This phenomenon has been going on for over a decade in many parts of the West. Not only are the trees decimated, but the abrupt kill off of pines radically alters the carbon dioxide cycle. “Forests take a century to grow to maturity,” says Canadian scientist Werner Kurz. “It takes only a single extreme climate event, a single attack by insects, to interrupt that hundred-year uptake of carbon.”

The only sensible way to fight the blight is to fell the ravaged pines and even a barrier radius around them, much as forest fire fighters do to stop a firestorm. Mountain pine beetles can travel 50 feet in a single jump as they go tree to tree. Costly spraying of insecticide is expensive and not practical on thousands of acres.

Then there's Larry Lipson. We met him during a recent Explore Green retreat at the Paws Up resort near Missoula, MT.  Larry and his family own the Big Sky Country spread of 37,000 acres. Paws Up is billed as “The Last Best Place on Earth.” But, even the last best place hasn’t warded off the mountain pine beetle.

Larry began noticing the effects of the pine beetle about two years ago on the Paws Up ranch. He had been reading about the subject when the subject showed up in his own backyard.

“We were seeing the devastation right before our eyes,” Larry said. He consulted with experts at a nearby educational forest of the University of Montana and other landowners feeling the impact. As a land manager, he was helpless to stop the invasion. Most landowners simply cut down the dead trees and either mulched the pulp or tried selling it for plywood which had nominal demand.

But, Larry is a visionary and a businessman. He surveyed the deathly landscape and saw opportunity instead of surrender. Larry found a path to profit and education.

It’s a funny thing about these pine beetles. As they burrow and devour the pine tree, they leave behind fungi, which contaminate the tree. The fungi grow within the tree and actually assist the beetle in killing the tree. The fungi are what give a blue-grey appearance to the sapwood.

Larry’s “eureka moment” came when he had some of the dead trees planed, a process that revealed streaks of blue-grey stain throughout the wood. It was different, unusual and Larry saw a market for it.

“It was a chance to do something positive with all the dead wood that would just go to waste,” Larry said.

Like I said, Larry is a businessman and didn’t just plunge into the effort to hug dead trees. He analyzed the marketplace, checked to make sure the pine was well-performing and not damaged by the beetles, ensured that fungi in the sapwood was not harmful to people or pets, and assembled a team who could locally strip the bark, kin dry and mill the wood.

As any good businessman, Larry contemplated how to market a product of ecological destruction riddled with fungi. Some would say, not an easy sell. But, Larry saw it differently.

“We had to reverse the perspective,” he said. “People have to want this product because it’s so cool.”

Larry created Greeno, a company whose name is the pronunciation of his Montana town www.greenobuilt.com.  He started milling the dead trees and showed off the wildly beautiful flooring, paneling and molding in one of Paws Up’s own cabins. He later took it a step further for the resort’s meeting and entertaining space, The Bull Barn www.pawsup.com.

“I didn’t want this product to be a step child that needs adoption,” he told me. “The perception is that this is a luxury item that makes a statement.”

What Larry is selling is not only the wood—it’s the story—and that’s where the education light goes on. “People like the story. They like the feeling of doing good, becoming involved and bringing the ecological message into their lives.”

Of course, Larry didn’t stop there. His is not the type of brain that switches off easily. Flooring and paneling is great for interior designers, homebuilders and the like. But, what about the masses of us who simply buy consumer products on a daily basis? Eureka moment Number 2. Larry created Bad Beetle. What else would you call the company? What’s the target market? Young people and those who care about the environment. It’s also folks who want the latest, coolest thing that nobody else has—yet. Bad Beetle makes iPad cases and accessories from the same blue-grey stained pine wood as Greeno’s millwork. “Handmade in Montana by ugly little artisans,” the website proclaims, www.badbeetle.com. “The one-of-a-kind markings on our iPad accessories are brought to you courtesy of Montana’s Mountain Pine Beetles. When these naughty nemeses invade trees, they create a beautiful, silvery blue stain. For the tree, it’s curtains. But for you, it’s a snazzy, insanely eco-friendly Bad Beetle accessory.” Now, aren’t you thinking, “Why didn’t I think of that?” Well, you didn’t and Larry did. Every time some wiz-bang, app-using, cloud-thinking, tech wonk logs on and buys a Bad Beetle product, he or she is learning about the devastation of the pine forests, what impact climate change has had and what the average individual can do about it. Economy meets Ecology. After all, every cloud has a silver lining.