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Trees Only Part of Positive Cycle for Environment
By Donn Zea
The focus on tree planting has perhaps never been greater, thanks to unprecedented attention to the issue of global warming. Trees are an effective way to absorb greenhouse gases, especially carbon - the gas that is blamed as a primary culprit in the warming of our planet.
Businesses, governments and non-profit organizations are clamoring to find ways to reduce carbon emissions - and ways to increase the absorption of greenhouse gases. Businesses with operations that create carbon gas are paying for the planting of trees and taking "carbon credits" for the carbon absorbed by those trees. You can even trade carbon credits on exchanges around the world.
But the role of trees in the global climate change fight doesn't end with a planting or the carbon absorption.
When we care for our forests and manage them responsibly, we create a positive cycle that helps the environment and utilizes one of the few renewable resources on our planet.
Forestry companies in California have planted trees for generations, providing our state today with millions of acres of carbon-absorbers. In the last 30 years, an estimated 1 billion trees have been planted by these businesses - even without the lure of getting "carbon credits."
These trees grow with the aid of sun, water and nutrients from the soil - in short, natural sources. They are then processed in mills where virtually every piece of a tree is used to create wood products for human use, including fuel for clean biomass energy.
Contrast the renewable nature of trees to the process needed for manufacturing other building products like concrete and steel.
While trees can be replanted and regrown, materials used to create concrete and steel are not renewable and require large amounts of fossil fuels in their production. The cycle of planting, growth, and harvesting removes and stores carbon while producing oxygen, and provides society with needed wood products that can store carbon for hundreds of years.
Forests that are properly thinned and managed also are less likely to fall victim to insect infestations and catastrophic wildfire, often-overlooked components in the global warming discussion.
Unfortunately, we've seen the result when we neglect our forests. On federally owned forests in California, little management has occurred in the last 15 years - leaving many of them overcrowded with too many trees that struggle for sun and nutrients.
These forests are at a high risk for catastrophic wildfire - and at a high risk of releasing staggering amounts of emissions that contribute to global warming.
In 2004, scientists studied devastating wildfires in Alaska and Canada that raged for more than two months. The 11 million acres that burned sent as much carbon monoxide into the air as all the cars, factories and other human-caused activities in the continental United States over those same two months, according to the international consortium for atmospheric research.
While it is easy to plant a tree and do a small part to fight climate change, if Californians want to have a real impact they will take more action.
Our state and national leaders should establish policies that promote the overall health of our forests, reforestation after wildfires and utilizing the unique renewable resource that trees provide to their fullest extent.
If we understand and embrace the benefits of trees, we can enhance the ways that trees can fight climate change to benefit Californians today - and future generations.
Donn Zea is President of the California Forest Products Commission.