Yale Environment 360 - Fen Montaigne
Preserving mature forests can play a vital role in removing CO2 from the atmosphere, says policy scientist William Moomaw. In an e360 interview, he talks about the importance of existing forests and why the push to cut them for fuel to generate electricity is misguided.
William Moomaw has had a distinguished career as a physical chemist and
environmental scientist, helping found the Center for International
Environment and Resource Policy at Tufts University’s Fletcher School
and serving as lead author on five reports of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In recent years, Moomaw has turned his
attention to working on natural solutions to climate change and has
become a
leading proponent of what he calls “proforestation” — leaving older and middle-aged forests intact because of their superior carbon-sequestration abilities.While
Moomaw lauds intensifying efforts to plant billions of young trees, he
says that preserving existing mature forests will have an even more
profound effect on slowing global warming in the coming decades, since
immature trees sequester far less CO2 than older ones. In an interview
with
Yale Environment 360, Moomaw explains the benefits of
proforestation, discusses the policy changes that would lead to the
preservation of existing forests, and sharply criticizes the recent
trend of converting forests in the Southeastern U.S. to wood pellets
that can be burned to produce electricity in Europe and elsewhere.
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| William Moomaw |
“The
most effective thing that we can do is to allow trees that are already
planted, that are already growing, to continue growing to reach their
full ecological potential, to store carbon, and develop a forest that
has its full complement of environmental services,” said Moomaw.
“Cutting trees to burn them is not a way to get there.”
Yale Environment 360: How do you define proforestation?
William Moomaw: So
I began looking at some of the data and some of the papers that had
come out recently, and I found that if we managed our forests and
grasslands in a different way they could be sequestering twice as much
carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they currently do. One paper found
in multi-aged forests around the world of all types, that half of the
carbon is stored in the largest one-percent diameter trees. So I began
thinking about this, and I realized that the most effective thing that
we can do is to allow trees that are already planted, that are already
growing, to continue growing to reach their ecological potential, to
store carbon, and develop a forest that has its full complement of
environmental services. We needed a name for that, so I began thinking
about names. I actually sat down and went to Google and searched for
prefixes, found a whole bunch of them, and the one that I settled on was
pro. Proforestation. It’s not that we shouldn’t do afforestation
[planting new trees] and we shouldn’t do reforestation. We should. But
recognize that their contribution will be farther in the future, which
is important. But in order to meet our climate goals, we have to have
greater sequestration by natural systems now. So that entails protecting
the carbon stocks that we already have in forests, or at least a large
enough fraction of them that they matter. We have to protect wetlands,
which are actually storing an amount of carbon in the United States that
equals what’s in our standing forests. We need to protect and improve
the carbon sequestration by agricultural soils and grazing lands.It’s
taken a very long time for people to focus on something besides reducing
emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. And to
recognize that even though we’re putting almost 11 billion tons of
carbon into the atmosphere every year, the increase is only 4.7 billion
tons. So where is the rest going? It’s going into plants on land and
plants in the ocean. And the largest single place that’s removing carbon
dioxide [from the atmosphere] on an annual basis is forests. Even what
we think of as mature forests are still accumulating carbon because
carbon makes up about roughly half of the dry weight of wood, but it is
also in the soils. Even older forests continue to accumulate carbon in
the soils. In fact there are forests where there’s more carbon in the
soils than there is in the standing trees. As trees get older, they
absorb more carbon every year, and because they are bigger they store
more carbon.
“The loss of forest canopy is the greatest in the Southeastern United States of any place on the planet.”
We’ve seen a lot of interest lately in planting more trees. And
planting trees is great and it makes us all feel good and it’s a
wonderful thing to do and we absolutely should be reforesting areas that
have been cut. A recent paper talked about how we could plant more than
a trillion trees on nearly a billion hectares of land and how much that
would do to solve the problem. These are great things to do, but they
will not make much of a difference in the next two or three decades
because little trees just don’t store much carbon. Letting existing
natural forests grow is essential to any climate goal we have.
e360: In terms of CO2 emissions, we’re
putting 30 to 35 billion tons of CO2 from burning fossil fuels into the
atmosphere every year, while at the same time there’s this dramatic
destruction of forests in the Amazon and in Southeast Asia. What we’re
looking at right now is really a perfect storm for soaring CO2
emissions.
Moomaw: That’s right. But don’t leave out the United
States. The most disturbed forests in the world are in the United
States, not the Amazon and not Indonesia. I don’t wish to lessen the
significance of the Amazon and Indonesia. But the loss of forest canopy
is the greatest in the Southeastern United States of any place on the
planet.
e360: Let’s talk about what’s happening in the
Southeastern U.S. and the wood pellet and biomass-burning industry that
is driving that deforestation and what can be done about it.
Moomaw: Well,
a little over a decade ago, as a result of a rule change in the
European Union, they declared bioenergy, like burning wood pellets, to
basically be a carbon-neutral and renewable energy source. But bioenergy
is more expensive than all the fossil fuels, more expensive than wind
and solar, and the industry would not be economically viable without
huge subsidies. So the EU, particularly the UK, is giving bioenergy huge
subsidies. The UK has reduced their coal use a lot, but their emissions
have not been reduced at the same rate as their coal reductions would
indicate because a big part of their replacement is from burning wood in
the form of wood pellets that primarily come from the Southeastern U.S.
The largest coal plant [in the UK], Drax, has converted half of its
units to burning wood pellets instead of coal. And there are a bunch of
other power plants in the UK that are doing the same thing, and the same
thing is happening on the continent. And they claim it’s
carbon-neutral.
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| An area of clearcut forest in the Tar-Pamlico River basin in northeastern North Carolina. Dogwood Alliance |
The tragedy in the Southeastern U.S. [where large
amounts of wood for biomass burning originates] is it’s the most
biodiversity-rich region in North America and has more species of
animals and plants than anyplace else. That is being decimated. For
pellets, wetland, hardwood forests are preferable to the pines and the
pine plantations, which don’t burn as hot, so those wetland hardwood
forests are really being gone after. For a long time, the companies made
the claim they were only using the residuals, the branches and so on.
An NGO down there called
Dogwood Alliance documented that that isn’t true. They’re converting whole trees [into pellets].
e360: What is the solution here, both in the U.S. and in Europe?
Moomaw: As you may recall, [former U.S. EPA
administrator] Scott Pruitt made the declaration that all forest
bioenergy was carbon-neutral. [U.S. Senator] Susan Collins of Maine
actually introduced an amendment, which is still binding, that states
that all federal agencies must consider all forest bioenergy from
sustainably managed forests to be carbon-neutral. There have been lots
of letters by scientists and statements that that is just false.
We’ll continue to need and want forestry products — that’s
understood. But the attitude in much of the forestry industry is that
all forests must be managed by principles that improve forests for
timber production. But we have to recognize that there’s a distinction
between industrial production forests and natural forests, and we must
make clear that natural forests are managed for biodiversity and the
full set of ecosystem services that forests provide. And, by the way,
which biodiversity are we shortest of? The biodiversity that’s
associated with older forests. We hardly have any older forests left in
the Lower 48 states. It’s in the small single digits of our original
forests. The Forest Service says that less than 7 percent of U.S.
forests are over 100 years old.
“The forests in the range of 70 to 125 years are the ones that are going to add the most carbon in the coming decades.”
e360: Talk about the need to expand protections of forests that now have little or no protection.
Moomaw: Except for the designated federal wilderness
areas in national forests, the rest of our forests are almost all
devoted to timber production. And as you’ve seen, the Trump
administration is now going after the
roadless areas,
as well. We need to have a conversation about which forests are most
capable of sequestering carbon in the near term. And those are forests
that are generally in the age range of 70 to 125 years — they are the
ones that are going to add the most carbon in the coming decades.
Unfortunately, 70 years, for many species, is the perfect size for the
sawmill. So it is going to mean saying ,well, we’re going to not cut
these. This has to apply to federal and state forests. In Connecticut,
there is not a single acre of state forest that is not subject to being
cut.
e360: And this is New England, the legendary home of reforestation in the last century.
Moomaw: That’s
right. And that all happened by benign neglect, which worked out in our
favor. The [U.S.] Forest Service has just moved into Massachusetts in
an alliance with the state and is creating cooperative organizations
that will lead to more cutting of this now very carbon-dense, rich
forest that we have in this part of New England. The Department of
Energy Resources in Massachusetts has put forth proposed changes and
regulations that would increase the amount of forests that qualify for
subsidies for bioenergy as a renewable resource, as an alternative
energy resource. The outcry from the scientific community, the NGO
community, and citizens has been enormous. There’s pressure to build a
wood-burning electric power generating station in a low income
neighborhood in Springfield, Massachusetts. And that’s being pushed back
against very hard by the public. But the governor and his team are
pushing forward to make it happen, with more subsidies — subsidies that
come from our electric bills. That subsidy doesn’t go to solar panels,
it goes to burning wood. We’ve got a real problem here.
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| A mature forest in the Berkshire Hills in western Massachusetts. Liza Daly/Flickr |
e360: So what policies do you pursue to have a sustainable forest products industry?
Moomaw: I think what you do is you concentrate it on
an appropriate set of lands. [Biologist] E.O. Wilson argues that we
need “half earth” — that is, half the world needs to be left to nature
in order to function. I suppose with one kidney and one lung, we can
make it.
One policy that I would suggest is that with privately owned forests
and relatively small forest plots, people be paid for the ecosystem
services of storing carbon and promoting old-growth biodiversity and the
resiliency to climate change that these forests provide. We need to
compensate private land owners for leaving their forests standing. Not
everybody will do it, but that might get us a mechanism where we get
closer to our goal.
The other thing — and there’s legislation
proposed here in Massachusetts — is that there be no more timber
harvesting on state forest lands. We now have a regulatory system that
sets aside about 60 percent of forest lands as either parks or reserves.
This would say that the remaining state woodlands would become reserves
or parks and not harvested. Well, that would mean that 13 percent of
the forests in Massachusetts would not be available for timber. The
howling has been unbelievable — “This is the end of the world!” And yet,
today, the regulatory system is not controlling this adequately at all.
e360: What about in the Southeastern U.S.? How do you slow down what’s happening with the wood pellet industry?
Moomaw: The best thing of course would be to remove subsidies. That would end it.
“Wood pellet plants are all being built in low-income, African American communities.”
The other thing is there’s a social justice issue here. The plants
that make the pellets are all being built in low-income, African
American communities that have five times the asthma rate as the state
of North Carolina as a whole. These plants produce a tremendous amount
of dust and particulate matter. Some of these communities are beginning
to fight back. There’s a big push down there politically to deal with
this. You know, it’s really amazing how short-term economic interest can
dominate social justice, climate outcomes, everything else. So I think
one way is to fight fire with fire and turn the subsidies around. Get
rid of the subsidies for bioenergy, begin to support the maintenance of
existing forests for private landowners, and really change our policies
on state and federal public lands.
e360: Is
there any progress in Europe in terms of recognizing that this is not a
carbon-neutral source of energy and should not be supported or
subsidized?
Moomaw: Yes, there are efforts. There’s an organization called
Biofuelwatch
in the UK. They are an amazingly well-informed, spunky bunch of
activists. The scientific community in Europe is beginning to shift its
views on this. It turns out that almost two-thirds of all the renewables
used in Europe are bioenergy.
e360: If we do a better job of protecting these older forests, what difference could it make in moderating temperature increases?
Moomaw: If we get to net-zero emissions by 2050
and we continue to reduce our emissions after that, and if we continue
to increase the biological sequestration — the nature-based solutions as
they’re sometimes referred to — we would actually start reducing the
amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere between 2050 and 2100. The
more we can increase the sequestration rate and the faster we can reduce
the emissions, the better off we’ll be. But cutting trees to burn them
is not a way to get there.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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