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TechnoratiThe Sierra Forests Can Prevent Global Warming
California's Global Warming Solutions Act is a landmark attempt to cap greenhouse gas emissions across all sectors of the state's economy. Signed into law in September 2006, the California Air Resources Board is figuring out the precise formula by which the state will reduce emissions 25 percent by 2020.
Imagine a grand formula that somehow left out - cars. Or industrial manufacturing. Leaving out one of these huge emissions sources would render any climate legislation toothless.
Fortunately, both will likely be accounted for. But will forests? Judging by recent statements, it isn't clear whether the state recognizes the outsize role California's forests play in naturally absorbing carbon emissions, or the quantity of carbon dioxide released when these forests are irresponsibly clear-cut.
Deforestation's role
Deforestation and logging account for one-fifth of all global carbon emissions - more than all trains, planes and, yes, automobiles combined. Any serious attempt to address California's contributions to climate change must include an understanding of what's happening in the forests of the Sierra Nevada.
In April, ForestEthics released "Climate of Destruction," a report outlining the logging practices of Sierra Pacific Industries, the state's largest landowner, and its effects on climate change. The results were not surprising: SPI's brand of forestry-large-scale clear-cutting operations across the Sierra and conversion of wild lands to sterile tree plantations-contributes mightily to climate change, more so than even wild fires. Its management plan calls for the clear-cutting and conversion of up to a million acres to "tree farm" plantations over the next 50 years.
Studies have shown that California's forests are particularly carbon-rich and that the best way to preserve a forest's stored carbon is to preserve the forest itself. We often talk about weaning ourselves off fossil fuels as a first step toward greater sustainability, but addressing deforestation is arguably as important.
As we put out our report, SPI released its own, titled "How California's Forests Store Carbon and Improve Air Quality.'' It's a nice title, but so were President Bush's "Clear Skies Act" or "Healthy Forests Restoration Act". A message of "don't worry, what we are doing now, which is what we have always done, is actually green'' permeates the report to justify clear-cutting and tree plantations. And when clear cuts are called a climate solution, it's time to worry.
Age counts
The more a forest ages, the more carbon it stores. Old trees, roots, woody debris and undisturbed soil combine to form a rich carbon-absorbing system that a human-made tree plantation cannot replicate. Remember nature? It works pretty well. When mature forests are clear-cut, most of the vast carbon stored goes into the atmosphere. When you see a clear cut, imagine a tailpipe.
The industry says young and growing trees consume carbon at a faster rate than older trees, and are therefore more valuable weapons against climate change. Young trees do absorb carbon at a higher rate. But this is a little like saying that because a baby's mind acquires language and complex thought rapidly early in life, intelligence acquired between ages 5 and 55 is of little use to society.
There's a huge fortune of carbon "intelligence" in a natural forest, and clear-cutting for little baby tree plantations runs counter to the ways the Earth is designed to protect itself.
California officials who are working on turning the Global Warming Solutions Act into on-the-ground policy treat forests as a carbon-neutral bystander. Is it the influence of the logging industry?
It would be a shame if a self-interested industry and its friends in Sacramento kept one of Gov. Schwarzenegger's proudest accomplishments from reaching its full potential.
15 Comments so far
Show AllNo real White Eagle Soaring would really be so glib and supportive of the environmental destruction of Nature and its wildlife under way, WES.
Glib? Glib is your comment with nothing whatsoever in support of your position. Supporting lies and disinformation of the AlGorean religion is NOT support for the many beings of Nature. I clearly stated my position supporting the environment and took issue with those who would deflect attention from real environmental protection.
Your response was based on a faith in Al Gore and his propaganda. Al Gore is one of the bigger polluters in Tennessee and has positioned himself with former Goldman Sachs execs to make millions on the promotion of the carbon credits through his company formed in 2004.
Your attack was personal and devoid of substance. See if you can bring content and real issues to the discussion.
I wouldn't be surprised if someone is taking some carbon trade money to start Aspen plantations. Aspens grow fast. Havest them and replant after growth has peaked and keep them from decomposing (how???), and some carbon is removed from the atmosphere.
I like the green retirement idea. Just need to keep it from becoming dog food retirement.
There are thousands hacking at the branches of evil for one who is striking at the root.
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www.real-sonic-bloom.com
Acknowledging the value of natural forests is admirable since they are part of the ecosystem that absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere. So too the ocean and cutting pollution from all sources into it. The ocean sequesters CO2 in the form of carbonates, zooplankton, phytoplankton, and so on up the food chain. Once upon a time the temperatures were a lot hotter and the earth's ecosystem plodded along nicely doing what it is designed to do -- establish and maintain a certain equilibrium. CO2 was once 10 times what it is now and all was well with the natural world.
So now a few brainy hotshots have folks all flustered about global warming with a tiny rise in CO2 and an ephemeral rise in average global surface temperature. Even that has stabilized since 2003 and in 2007, dropped a whole .7 degrees C. We were supposed to be alarmed that the ice cap might melt even more this summer than last summer. It didn't. The winds didn't blow so hot from Sibera this summer to the Arctic Ice Cap off that shore didn't melt as much. Actually, it was a cooler summer in the Arctic this year so the polar ice cap finished the summer 9% larger than last year. Have we canceled the alarms yet? Polars were supposed to be in decline but at least 12 of the 15 populations are at all time highs and showing no evidence of decline. No matter. The Bush Administration doesn't need facts to decide policy. They sought protection for polar bears under the endangered species act.
And the knee-jerk environmentalists cheered.
Now Al Gore can add polar bears as endangered species to his movie and book. That should help his carbon-trading business. Generation Management Investment LLC, flourish and make him and the former Goldman Sachs executives a lot of money. After all, Anthropogenic Global Warming is more a religion than a science. It was set up by the UN to PROMOTE the agenda of man-made global warming, not to engender real science.
http://www.real-debt-elimination.com/real_freedom/Propaganda/Global_Warming_Myth/global_warming_as_rel...
The current forest cutting plans are works of pure fiction imagining that there is going to be demand for timber at prices that justify the fuel costs of logging. It's not going to happen. Living in Northern California I suffered a month of chocking smoke this last summer as wildfires ran rampant through our forests. This was the result of so-called 'forest management' that had suppressed the normal fire cycles that clear out fuel loads by burning very early and late in the fire season.
The forest that was here when white people arrived had been managed by the first peoples for 30,000 years quite succesfully using only fire timing and patience. The choked, beetle-infested, tree farms that we have now have some time to go before they become true forests again.
Fighting the forces of rather dim lighting wherever they may be found!!
Capitalists have civil liberties too. The capitalist left is really big on civil liberties. So please let the capitalists clearcut some more of the Sierra Nevada.
The problem is the capitalist left embraces the leftist agenda as a gimmick to glue the left together only to help maintain the capitalist status quo. The progressive left is different, and frames all the problems that capitalism creates in the proper frame - as outcomes of an ideological death and destruction machine that we have to suppress, plain and simple.
We don't need the massive relentless consumption growth that fuels the clearcutting of the Sierra Nevada and all the rest of the destruction. We don't need any economic growth of any kind. Instead, we need an economic shift away from gluttonous consumption to conservation/efficiency. So let the capitalist left lose its capitalist delusions. Until then the progressive left will "vote third party".
When the concept of money arose it began a process of decimating the pricless for things of transitory worth. There is possibly no greater evidence than the clear cutting of a magnificent cathedral-like forest COMMUNITY. My children don't understand why I bought a little place on the border of a state park. It's because this KIND of lifestyle, close to nature, is rapidly disappearing. That I see deer every day (some probably know me), listen for exotic bird calls, and sometimes get these aqua crystal waters ALL to myself (a sacred place, especially when those who don't understand it are not making senseless noise and desecrating the holiness of such sanctuaries) I realize THIS makes me feel rich and renewed. So few of these types of places remain, especially when even state parks are being opened to capitalistic exploitation of a numerous sorts.
Years ago I stopped with a friend at Grand Canyon. She'd never seen it. There were so many cars and vans that you could not stop for more than few moments to take in any view. And there were guides speaking to persons of other nations. She made me laugh when she immitated the German one whose articulation of the word "toilet haussen" stayed with us... not exactly a romantic verbal backdrop for the magnificence of the expansive scenery before us.
A recent study by a University here in BC showed that allowing a forest to stand, was worth more in real dollars to the economy then the value of the timber had it been clear cut.
They pointed out the ongoing harvest of mushrooms by locals, the value to tourism, the ability of the forest to catch rainfall thus preventing floods and the like its use as a carbon sink and so on.
Our economies are mucked up and it all because of that DOLLAR and the notion that we must put a price on everything and then claim these resources are now OWNED by some Private entity.
When we expend 5 times the energy inside a barrel of oil, to extract that barrel of oil from the tar sands, something is really wrong. Any creature in nature that expended 200 calories to obtain 40 calories of food would be dead.
We have to get back to the notion of the commons, that being the common ownership of all a countries resources with the responsibility of passing that intact as much as possible to our descendants .
This point should have been raised before the Sahara Forest was lost.
Thank you and keep up the good work!
The trick to making it happen, will be to make it more profitable, to grow trees instead of cattle. Only 5% of California's redwoods remain, much of that land has been turned into grazing for cattle, 100 years ago we did to our state what Brazil is doing to the Amazon.
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That's a great slogan. Donate all your profits to the cause ehh?
Thanks for the compliment. And you have every reason to be suspicious of my motives. The liberal hijacking of the green movement, in an attempt to profit from the destruction of the environment, has made my life more difficult.
I have been posting on Commondreams for quite a while, unlike most people I used to use my actual name, you may recall me and can check my progressive bona fides here.
http://bananatreehotel.com/ramsay/al_gore_iphone/
After attacking the system from the outside and getting nowhere, I have come to the conclusion, that it is more effective to change the system from the inside and hope that Obama's fate does not await me. Otherwise, I can spend the rest of my life, posting my rants on Commondreams and changing nothing. I am walking the walk, not just talking the talk, trying to find practical solutions.
I am attempting to make people become green, out of greed, people will save the planet out of self interest. And I will use the capitalist method of spreading the virus. Capitalism defeated communism, and was so successful, precisely because it takes advantage of human nature - greed.
Do The World A Favor And Retire!
Green Retirement Planning
The headline for this item is a complete lie--Nothing "can prevent global warming" because it is already happening and accelerating. Keeping forests healthy and intact will help MITIGATE global warming, but only massive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions can slowdown, halt and then PERHAPS reverse global warming.
Before this completely slips from public consciousness, I'd like to again address the recently ended tree sit at UC Berkeley. At around 640 days it was the longest urban tree-sit in history, until the university came in about a week ago and destroyed the the Memorial grove, that not only was a living monument to WWI veterans, but also was discovered to be a Native American burial ground.
Now there is only desolation, a clearing for a athletic facility that could have been built elsewhere, and probably won't be built at the site anyhow, due to being directly on a fault line.
This was a relatively small protest, at a large school, and not just any school, but Berkeley, a symbol of protest, student activism, and progressive thought stemming from the radical student population that resided there in the 60s. Now, unfortunately, the student population is less inclined to offer any resistance the the big guys, being cowed into a frightful submission by thug-like tactics of a university police cadre. That is, those who care at all, as maybe one in one hundred offer even the most basic vocal support.
Just so my point may be clear, this is Berkeley California. These are our best and brightest, and they are cut off from any felt experience of the world they live in, and by and large do not have the entheogenic awareness the students of the 60s had, forever imprisoning them in world of bogus materialist ideologies, where green open spaces are being paved over in the name of cultural progress.
This is not an affirmation of doom, but a wake-up call to those who think that things are going swell on the frontlines of this battle; that more support needs to be given to help these causes (including bail funds) and a better realization that an emergence of a new psychedelic culture is the best medicine for cultural sleepwalkers.
ergoat you are dead on right. The current Cal population lives in zombie-land. 'Duh' is the only emotion you can evicit from these zombies. Like little capitalist piglets they frolic in abject detachment in 'whatever'-land.