[Occupymendocino] Clearcuts, Global Warming and Sisyphus

[Richard Karch]

***  ~~~  Good Talk From Humboldt  ~~~  BC

One very special THP!                   by Dan Zimmerman...

Clearcuts, Global Warming and Sisyphus
The story of Sisyphus is a perfect metaphor for the struggle by activists to end the destructive 
practice of clearcuts and short term rotations in forests worldwide. Even when a clearcut plan is 
successfully fought, it will usually pop up again in a later plan and the trees will still be cut, but just 
like Sisyphus, activists will still push the rock back up the hill. Initially we fought to save the forests 
for their beauty as well as their biological significance. Then we learned of all the species that were 
negatively impacted by this form of intensive management, many going extinct, and fought to save 
those. Now we realize that allowing forests to grow to maturity is the only hope we have for saving all 
of life from extinction brought on by global warming, and the fight becomes a moral imperative. 

The first step in this process is awareness of the truth, but without an understanding of the lies 
that are being passed off as truth, there is no hope for true awareness, and when it comes to forestry 
there is no greater lie than the one that says cutting young forests will help end global warming, as can 
be seen in this quote from an industry website;

“Did you know that carbon accounts for around 50% the dry weight of a tree? When trees are 
harvested and manufactured into products, this carbon remains stored for the life of the wood 
product.....One of the best ways to address climate change is to use more wood, as it is the most 
abundant, biodegradable and renewable material on our planet!”

This is a lie based on three absurd concepts. One, that all of the forest will end up as a finished 
wood product. Two, that this wood will stay in use for 100 years and this is long enough to be effective 
in combating global warming, and three, that a young forest takes in the most carbon, and very little as 
the tree matures beyond that point. The following refutes these claims.

Lie #1. Very little of the carbon in a forest will end up in a finished wood product. Roughly 60%
of the carbon in a young growth redwood and fir forest is found in the leaves, branches, stump, roots 
and soil (Jandl 2007, Bonan 2008, Thomas and Martin 2012), all of which is left to decompose or be 
burned, releasing most of it's CO2 to the atmosphere in a short period of time. 

Lie #2. Of that which makes it to the mill, roughly 20% of the forest carbon will end up in a 
finished product, the rest is mill waste to be burnt or put in a landfill where it is converted to methane. 
Of that which does become a wood product, most of this will be in use for less than 40 years (Smith 
2006, Gower 2006, Ingerson 2009, Skog 2008). Of the 1% that does stay in use for 100 years, this is 
still not to be considered long term sequestration, as it only means that this carbon will enter the 
atmosphere when sequestration is most needed. The conservative IPCC states that by 2100 we need to 
be carbon neutral or carbon negative worldwide or expect the worst.

Lie #3. As a tree matures it adds ever greater amounts of carbon to it's structure. This is 
especially true for conifer forests in Northern California. The following quotes from recent research 
highlight this fact; “The oldest tree we measured produced more heartwood in its main trunk over 651 
years (351 m3) than contained in any tree we measured <1500 years old. Increasing wood production 
as trees age is a mechanism underlying the maintenance of biomass accumulation during forest 
development and the carbon-sink capacity of old-growth forests” (Sillett 2009). “Large, old trees do 
not act simply as senescent carbon reservoirs but actively fix large amounts of carbon compared to 
smaller trees; at the extreme, a single big tree can add the same amount of carbon to the forest within a
year as is contained in an entire mid-sized tree” (Stephenson 2014). 

If the biomass of a tree is 50% carbon, and that biomass is growing ever greater as the tree 
matures, then it's storage of carbon is also increasing as it matures, and not visa versa as the timber 
industry claims. This is an important fact to understand as it negates all rationales put forth by the 
industry to justify their actions. Intensive management of forests is allowed because the timber industry
has convinced state and federal regulators that clearcutting forests on short term rotations is good for 
the environment and helps alleviate climate change.

Not only are intensively managed forests carbon emitters, those forests, if left to grow, are the 
most important form of sequestration that we know of. Solving the climate crisis involves not only 
reducing emissions, but removing carbon from the atmosphere and sequestering it as well, and there are
only two natural forms of sequestration that can accomplish this as all man made forms are untested, 
exorbitantly expensive and many years away from implementation. 

The two types of natural sequestration are the ocean, and plant/soil life. For many years 
scientists believed that the oceans absorbed the greatest amount, but recent research has shown the 
opposite to be true, that forests were the greatest carbon sink on the planet (Pan 2011). They also found 
that all other forms of plant life (brush, agriculture etc) were insignificant in their role as carbon sinks. 
This is a quote from one of the lead researchers, Dr. Simon Lewis; "Humans are altering the world's 
forests in a number of ways.....Our research shows these changes are having globally important 
impacts, which highlights the critical role forests play in the global cycling of carbon and therefore the 
speed and severity of future climate change."

This point has also been stressed by Andrea Tuttle, former head of CDF. “Forests are a huge 
carbon-storage bank, and represent our largest opportunity to remove carbon dioxide already in the 
atmosphere. When forests are lost to development, fire or degradation, they become a major source of 
emissions. (Tuttle 2015)

Of the two forms of sequestration available to us, the only beneficial one is forest sequestration,
as ocean sequestration increases acidity and kills aquatic life. Add to that the fact that a mature forest 
helps stem the extinction crisis by providing old growth dependent species with a home, while 
producing clean water and clean air, and the need to let forests mature worldwide becomes paramount. 

All of the above is especially true for redwood forests. The redwood tree can take in more 
carbon than any other living thing while sequestering that carbon longer than any other living thing, 
anywhere from 1000 to 3000 years. That is the type of long term sequestration that we desperately need
in order to solve the climate crisis, and clearcutting a forest on short rotations is the opposite of this 
type of sequestration. A young redwood tree ready for short rotation harvest might weigh roughly 
50,000 pounds. This equates to approximately 25,000 pounds of carbon. If that tree is cut down, over 
half of that carbon will enter the atmosphere in a short period of time with most of the rest emitted over
the next 40 years. If that tree is left to grow to maturity it will remove from the atmosphere 6,000,000 
pounds of carbon and sequester 2,000,000 pounds or more in the bole of the tree and the rest in the soil.

The timber industry points out that once a forest is cut the newly planted forest will begin to 
take in carbon as it grows. What they don't state is that 40 years later the cycle of cut and release of 
carbon begins all over again. None of this is beneficial, nor is it a solution for solving the climate crisis.
They are turning our forests into continuous emitters of carbon instead of letting them do the job that 
only they can do, save us from a catastrophe. If left uncut, all of the carbon in that forest will stay 
where it is, sequestered for hundreds and thousands of years, with ever greater amounts added to it as 
the forest matures. This is the truth that they try to hide from us.

At this point in time we can't wait for the timber industry or government regulators to finally 
admit the obvious and start helping us to solve the crisis we face. It is time for every citizen of this 
country to stand up and force the change that is desperately needed. The following quote is from the 
Oslo Principles; “The biosphere, all forms of life within it and the ecological processes that maintain 
all living organisms are part of the common heritage of humanity. Human beings, because of their 
unique nature and capacities, have an essential duty as guardians and trustees of the Earth to preserve,
protect and sustain the biosphere and the full diversity of life within it....Avoiding severe global 
catastrophe is a moral and legal imperative. To the extent that human activity endangers the biosphere,
particularly through the effects of human activity on the global climate, all States and enterprises have 
an immediate moral and legal duty to prevent the deleterious effects of climate change.” 

Wildman (AKA Dan Zimmerman), 
Northcoast Ocean and River Protection Association (NORPA), Trinidad, CA.
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