Greenspirit
TREES ARE THE ANSWER
by Patrick Moore, Ph.D., Chairman Sustainable Forestry Commit tee
Continued from the last issue
You would think that since forestry is the most sustainable of all the primary industries, and that wood is without a doubt the most renewable material used to build and maintain our civilization, that this would give wood a lot of green ecopoints in the environmental movement’s ledger. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be the case. Greenpeace has gone before the United Nations Inter-Governmental Panel on Forests, calling on countries to reduce the amount of wood they use and to adopt "environmentally appropriate substitutes" instead. No list of substitutes is provided. The Sierra Club is calling for "zero cut" and an end to all commercial forestry on federal public lands in United States. The Rainforest Action Network wants a 75 percent reduction in wood use in North America by the year 2015. I think it is fair to summarize this approach as "cut fewer trees, use less wood". It is my firm belief, as a lifelong environmentalist and ecologist, that this is an anti-environmental policy. Put ting aside, for a moment, the importance of forestry for our economy and communities; on purely environmental grounds the policy of "use less wood" is anti-environmental. In particular, it is logically inconsistent with, and diametrically opposed to, policies that would bring about positive results for both climate change and biodiversity conservation. I will explain my reasoning for this belief:First, it is important to recognize that we do use a tremendous amount of wood. On a daily basis, on average, each of the 6 billion people on Earth uses 3.5 pounds or 1.6 kilos of wood every day, for a total of 3.5 billion tons per year. So why don’t we just cut that in half and save vast areas of forest from harvesting? In order to demonstrate the superficial nature of this apparent logic it is necessary to look at what we are doing with all this wood.
It comes as a surprise to many people that over half the wood used every year is not for building things but for burning as energy. 60 percent of all wood use is for energy, mainly for cooking and heating in the tropical developing countries where 2.5 billion people depend on wood as their primary source of energy. They cannot afford substitutes because most of them make less than $1000 per year. But even if they could afford substitute fuels they would nearly always have to turn to coal, oil, or natural gas; in other words non-renewable fossil fuels. How are we going to stabilize carbon dioxide emissions from excessive use of fossil fuels under the Climate Change Convention if 2.5 billion people switch from a renewable wood energy to non-renewable fossil fuels? Even in cases where fuelwood supplies are not sustainable at present levels of consumption the answer is not to use less wood and switch to non-renewables. The answer is to grow more trees.
25 percent of the wood used in the world is for building things such as houses and furniture. Every available substitute is non-renewable and requires a great deal more energy consumption to produce. That is because wood is produced in a factory called the forest by renewable solar energy. Wood is essentially the material embodiment of solar energy. Non-renewable building materials such as steel, cement, and plastic must be produced in real factories such as steel mills, cement works, and oil refineries. This usually requires large inputs of fossil fuels inevitably resulting in high carbon dioxide emissions. So, for 70 percent of the wood used each year for energy and building, switching to substitutes nearly always results in increased carbon dioxide emissions, contrary to climate change policy.
15 percent of the wood harvested is used to manufacture pulp and paper mainly for printing, packaging, and sanitary purposes. Fully half of this wood is derived from the wastes from the sawmills which produce the solid wood products for building. Most of the remaining supply is from tree plantation’s many of which are established on land that was previously cleared for agriculture. So even if we did stop using wood to make pulp and paper it would not have the effect of "saving" many forests.
Many of you have heard of the idea that we should stop using trees to make paper and use "alternative fibers" such as hemp, kenaf, and cotton. "Tree-free paper" made from "wood-free pulp" would supposedly be better for the environment than paper made from trees. I speak at schools and universities on a regular basis and have found that many young people believe that this is the right approach to improve the environment. I ask them "where are you going to grow the hemp, on Mars? Do you have another continent somewhere that we don’t know about? No, the fact is we would have to grow the hemp on this planet, in soil where you could otherwise be growing trees. Give me an acre of land anywhere on Earth, tell me to grow something there with which I can make paper, that would also be best for biodiversity, and I will plant trees every single time, without exception.
It is simply a fact that even the simplest monoculture pine plantation is better for wildlife, birds, and insects than any annual farm crop. It is ridiculous for environmental groups who say their main concern is biodiversity conservation to be advocating the establishment off massive monocultures of annual exotic farm crops where we could be growing trees. It is therefore clear to me that the policy of "use less wood" is anti-environmental because it would result in increased carbon dioxide emissions and a reduction in forested land. I believe the correct policy is a positive rather a negative one. From an environmental perspective the correct policy is "grow more trees, and use more wood". This can be accomplished in a number of ways.
First, it is important to place some of the world’s forest into permanently protected parks and wilderness reserves where no industrial development occurs. The World Wildlife Fund recommends that 10 percent of the world’s forests should be set aside for this purpose. Perhaps it should even be 15 percent. But then the question becomes, how should we manage the remaining 85 to 95 percent of the forest? I believe we should manage it more intensively for higher timber production, keeping in mind the needs of other species in the landscape. By just managing our existing forests better we could dramatically increase the world’s supply of wood. In addition, we should expand the geographic extent of our forests, largely by reforesting areas of land that were previously cleared for agriculture. In particular, huge areas of forest have been cleared for domestic animal production to supply us with meat. A modest reduction in meat consumption would open up large areas of land for reforestation. This would be good for our health as well as the health of the environment.
In the tropical developing countries there is a pressing need for sustainable fuelwood plantations as well as forest plantations to provide timber. We should direct more of our international aid programs towards this end. Relatively modest changes in fiscal and taxation policy could bring about a doubling of global wood supply within 40 years. All that is required is the political will to put these policies in place. But the general public and our political leaders have been confused by the misguided approach towards forestry taken by much of the environmental movement. So long as people think it is inherently wrong to cut down trees we will continue to behave in a logically inconsistent and dysfunctional manner.
I believe that trees are the answer to many questions about our future on this earth. These include how can we advance to a more sustainable economy based on renewable fuels and materials? How can we improve literacy and sanitation in developing countries while reversing deforestation and protecting wildlife at the same time? How can we reduce the amount of greenhouse gases emitted to the atmosphere carbon dioxide in particular? How can we increase the amount of land that will support a greater diversity of species? How can we help prevent soil erosion and provide clean air and water? How can we make this world more beautiful and green? The answer is, by growing more trees and using more wood both as a substitute for nonrenewable fossil fuels and materials such as steel, concrete, and plastic, and as paper products for printing, packaging, and sanitation.
By far the most powerful tool at our disposal to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel consumption is the growing of trees and the use of wood. Most environmentalists recognize the positive benefits of growing trees to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But then they say "don’t cut them down or you will undo the good that’s been done". This would be true if you simply piled the trees in a heap and lit them on fire. If, however, the wood is used as a substitute for fossil fuels and for building materials whose production consumes fossil fuels, we can dramatically reduce the consumption of fossil fuels and carbon dioxide emissions. For example, consider a large coal-burning power plant. If we grow trees and use the wood as a substitute for the coal we are able to offset nearly 100 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions from the power plant. That is because sustainable use of wood results in a zero net release of carbon dioxide whereas coal combustion counts for the full 100 percent. If environmentalists would recognize this fact it would inevitably lead them to believe that the answer is in growing more trees and using more wood rather than in reducing our use of this most renewable resource.
To conclude, let me take you back to the rainforest of the West Coast of North America. About 300 feet from my house in downtown Vancouver is Pacific Spirit Park, 2000 acres of beautiful native forest, right in the heart of the city. It is not a botanical garden where people come and prune the bushes and plant tulip bulbs, it is the real thing, a wild west coast rainforest full of Douglas-fir, western red cedar, hemlock, maple, alder and cherry. But people who come by the hundreds each day to walk on the many trails in Pacific Spirit Park would find it hard to believe that all 2000 acres were completely clearcut logged around the turn of the century to feed the sawmills that helped build Vancouver.
The loggers who clearcut Pacific Spirit Park with double-bitted axes and crosscut saws long before the chainsaw was invested didn’t know the words ecology or biodiversity any more than my grandfather did on the north end of Vancouver Island. They just cut the timber and moved on to cut more somewhere else. Nothing was done to help restore the land, but it was left alone. It became part of the University y of British Columbia Endowment Lands, and was not developed into housing like the rest of Vancouver. It all grew back into a beautiful new forest and in 1989 was declared a regional park. In Pacific Spirit Park, there are Douglas-firs over four feet in diameter and over 120 feet tall. All of the beauty has returned to Pacific Spirit Park. The fertility has returned to the soil. And the biodiversity has recovered; the mosses, ferns, fungi, liverworts, and all the other small things that are part of a natural forest. There are pileated woodpeckers, barred owls, ravens, hawks, eagles, coyotes and a colony of great blue herons nesting in the second- growth cedar trees. It is a forest reborn, reborn from what is routinely described in the media as the "total and irreversible destruction of the environment". I don’t buy that. I believe that if forests can recover by themselves from total and complete destruction, that with our growing knowledge of forest science in silviculture, biodiversity conservation, soils, and genetics; we can ensure that the forests of this world continue to provide an abundant, and hopefully growing, supply of renewable wood to help build and maintain our civilization while at the same time providing an abundant, and hopefully growing, supply of habitat for the thousands of other species that depend on the forest for their survival every day just as much as we do. The fact is, a world without forests is as unthinkable as a day without wood. And it’s time that politicians, environmentalists, foresters, teachers, journalists, and the general public got that balance right. Because we must get it right if we are going to achieve sustainability in the 21st century.
That’s Green Spirit - Trees Are the Answer, thank you very much, and May the Forest be With You! (Dr. Moore’s web address is www.greenspirit.com).