Forest Carbon Assumptions

Renewables
2

Thanks Will. You make some good points. The Trillion Trees proposal has been around for a while. The Sierra Club had some discussions about it over a year ago and declined to support it. It does not distinguish between proforestation, aforestation, and reforestation. Proforestation is the process of encouraging forests to become more mature. Aforestation is putting forests where they were not previously. Reforestation is replanting forests where trees have been removed. Proforestation is one of our top terrestrial carbon sinks. It was good to see this acknowledged recently at the COP26. There is concern that the Trillion Trees proposal is open to abuse from the timber industry. They do want credit for plantation reforestation as well as credit for not converting land use. Their arguments about old growth carbon versus young tree carbon undermines regeneration and proforestation. If you think about the volume of a tree ring, it is much larger in older trees. However, the cubic meters of consumer product is far from the full story. Ecosystems and their services are responsible for large scale carbon sequesterization. I liked your points about soils as well. There is a lot of acknowledgement about blind spots in LCA and this is one of them. I see the timber industry as undermining the legitimacy of WBLCA and other EPDs. Their mandate is to get out the cut. The 30x30 Proposal has the potential to sequester vast amounts of carbon banks and to promote proforestation. Water and quality of life are much bigger economic engines than industrial extraction, especially on public lands. The CORRIM Report is exactly the type of industrial abuse that makes the Trillion Trees proposal difficult to support. I am also uncertain as to how the Million Trees effort in Ethiopia actually went down. However, much of Ethiopia used to be forested.