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Using forests is good for us
August 31, 2007
By Tracy Warner, Wenatchee World

Fight global warming. Harvest timber.

This is not counter-intuitive. Carbon dioxide released by human activity is concentrating in the atmosphere and contributing to the warming of the planet. Growing trees absorb carbon. To encourage tree growth, harvest old trees to make room for the new. Use wood, sell more lumber, to increase its value and thus encourage the preservation of forests and the growing of more valuable carbon-absorbing trees.

Environmentalists mostly have it wrong. They should encourage us to use more wood, not less. They should encourage active, sustainable use of our forests, and not their abandonment to overgrowth, catastrophic fires and encroaching development. This is the premise of Patrick Moore, scientist and co-founder of Greenpeace, writing this week in the Vancouver Sun.

His is not unlike the conclusion reached recently by some environmentalists and Washington legislators, who want the state to purchase more timberland, not just for parks or preserves, but for logging. They want $70 million set aside for land purchases, said the Associated Press. They realize that "logging is better for the planet than unchecked development." Private timberlands lose value if trees can't be cut and new trees grown, so the land is more likely to be converted to other uses, where all trees are cut and never grow back. And no timber harvest means no timber industry, so forests lose more economic value, and forest-consuming development becomes more likely. "In the longer run we want to preserve the working forest sector of our economy," said Sen. Karen Fraser, D-Olympia.

Moore would agree with the strategy. "Trees are the most powerful concentrators of carbon on Earth," he wrote. "Through photosynthesis, they absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and store it in their wood, which is nearly 50 percent carbon by weight. Trees contain about 250 kilograms of carbon per cubic meter."

The science is simple, Moore said. Young trees growing quickly absorb huge amounts of carbon from the atmosphere. Old-growth trees absorb almost nothing, although tons of carbon are locked into their fibers until released back into the atmosphere by burning or rotting. The trapped carbon is not released if the timber is cut. It stays in the wood.

Deforestation truly can have a negative effect on the atmosphere, but it is occurring mostly in tropical forests razed for agriculture and urban development, said Moore. Removal of tropical forests is responsible for up to 20 percent of global carbon emissions.

In North America, after a decline forests are expanding, for now. We have the same acreage in forest we did 100 years ago. That may change if we reduce the forests' value by not using them, and by discouraging the use of harvested wood. Saying no to lumber means we use substitute materials -- mined, forged and hauled by carbon-belching industries.

"To address climate change, we must use more wood, not less. Using wood sends a signal to the marketplace to grow more trees and to produce more wood," wrote Moore.

So, managed and sustainable harvest of timber absorbs more atmospheric carbon and increases the value of forest land. It is good for the environment. The strategy of a perpetual hands-off, no-logging policy for public timberlands and all national forests is self-destructive, in more ways than one.

Tracy Warner's column appears Tuesday through Friday. He can be reached at warner@wenworld.com or 509-665-1163.