Larry Glass, NEC Board President
Caroline Griffith, NEC Executive Director
Although we’ve written extensively in this column about the environmental degradation caused by industrial logging and the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions, we’ve very rarely made the connection between the two. We’ve been reviewing a very interesting study on carbon emissions by the timber industry, commissioned by the Battle Creek Alliance and conducted by John Talberth, Ph.D. Senior Economist, Center for Sustainable Economy, which highlights this connection and the need to include emissions in the list of harms caused by industrial logging.
This study provides an estimate of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with logging and logging road construction in Shasta and Siskiyou Counties using publicly available forest carbon data from 2012 to 2022. It estimates that GHG emissions associated with logging and logging roads in Shasta and Siskiyou counties average over 4 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent per year, equivalent to the annual emissions from 883,000 gas-powered passenger vehicles. In Shasta County, the annual emissions estimate of 2.07 MMT CO2-e/yr exceeds those associated with building energy use, transportation, solid waste, water use, and agriculture combined.
GHG emissions associated with industrial logging activities are excluded from California’s climate action agenda, meaning that the state of California does not report or regulate emissions from industrial logging activities. This is because logging-related emissions are assumed to be climate neutral, the premise being that emissions from logging are offset by replanting or by forest growth elsewhere. This flawed assumption ignores the fact that trees take decades to grow to the size where they will sequester as much carbon as those that were logged. Although they are technically “renewable”, reforested plantations simply do not grow on a fast enough timescale to cancel out the emissions produced by logging.
Industrial timber landscapes are dominated by clearcuts, logging roads and timber plantations which store much less – and actually emit a lot more – carbon. As such, emissions associated with intensive logging activities play a key role in keeping GHG concentrations in the atmosphere far above pre-industrial levels. This of course is compared to the natural forest ecosystems that they have replaced. (The main GHGs in the Earth’s atmosphere are water vapor, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and ozone.)
A standing living tree is about 50 percent carbon by weight. When that tree is cut down and turned into lumber, paper, or wood pellets the majority of this stored carbon is released into our atmosphere over time, most of it during the first few years after logging. To make this situation even worse, intensively logged areas emit – rather than sequester – carbon for about 10 to 15 years after logging as needles, roots, and stumps decay and as soil disturbance and changes in the hydrology release CO2 and other GHGs into the atmosphere.
Forests cut down to make way for subdivisions, highways, infrastructure or commercial development eliminate carbon sequestration permanently. Logging roads do the same thing if they are left open and kept clear of vegetation. In addition, industrial logging activities generate significant fossil fuel-related GHG emissions associated with the construction of roads, operation of equipment, fertilizer and pesticide applications, milling and manufacturing, transport of logs and end-use products, and disposal of wood products in landfills. CO2, CH4 and N2O are emitted by these processes.
In comparison with the natural forest carbon cycle, which catches and stores carbon both above and below ground continuously for thousands of years, the whole industrial logging process can be thought of as a “catch and release” forest carbon regime that on balance takes little or no carbon out of the atmosphere. Carbon accumulation on the land all but ceases. As such, California’s commitment to net zero and climate restoration requires commitments to monitor and reduce emissions from logging activities.
The timber industry has always been given a pass in California; the industry is still practicing the extremely destructive practice of clear-cutting across large swaths of the state and then creating fire-prone plantations of even-aged trees. These plantations are then sprayed with dangerous chemical pesticides, which have their own carbon footprint as most pesticides are made from petrochemicals. Recent history has shown that tree plantations are more prone to wildfires, so this practice is dangerous on many levels. Logging companies get a substantial break on their taxes and now, as we see from this study, they get a pass on their greenhouse gas emissions, too. It’s time for the State of California to stop indulging this dirty industry and start regulating emissions from industrial logging.
To download a copy of the report visit sustainable-economy.org/a-gaping-hole-in-californias-climate-action-framework-big-timber