Over a thousand years ago, the Vikings left safe harbors here in Denmark and raced to discover the world beyond their familiar seas. They sailed graceful ships, carefully hewn from wood. While you are here in Copenhagen, you can see these ships at the Museum in Roskilde. Several of them are originals, having survived hundreds of years on the sea floor.
Human history is marked by the race to discover the next greatest thing. Our efforts here this week are no different. Each of us has a stake on a favorite horse to be the winning choice in the race to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gases.
Like the Vikings, we want to discover the next new innovation. But reducing atmospheric greenhouse gases is not only about new technology. It’s also about one that’s been around for billions of years — photosynthesis.
Photosynthesis is the original green power. It is ready-now carbon capture and storage technology.
Fortunately, photosynthesis is a flexible technology offering many options.
Forestry options for reducing greenhouse gases range from preservation of intact forests, to sustainably managed working forests. In a preserved forest, trees sequester carbon dioxide and store carbon on site. But in a sustainably managed forest, the regenerated trees not only sequester and store carbon, but the products made from them store carbon for decades, or longer, such as those graceful Viking sailing ships from a thousand years ago.
In addition to reducing emissions from avoided deforestation — an important mitigation tool — sustainable forest management, global forest area expansion and the sustainable use of forest products are also meaningful and cost effective climate mitigation. In the United States, our forests store carbon equal to 14 percent of our total emissions — nearly equal to our industrial sector emissions — and represent an increase in forest area from 100 years ago.
Sustainable forest management can increase the carbon benefits from a forest. In the Douglas fir forests of the United States Pacific Northwest, near my company headquarters, the total carbon benefits of sustainably managed working forests are nearly 100 tons per hectare greater than a forest that is not harvested.
Harvested wood products expand carbon storage options. Each year, over 175 million tons of atmospheric carbon dioxide are stored in products that we use every day — chairs, tables, floors. Products so ubiquitous, we take them for granted.
But forest products are not only renewable, recyclable and provide carbon storage benefits, they require less fossil fuel to manufacture than non-wood product substitutes.
The critical need to mitigate carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere demands we find a way to encourage sustainably managed forests and the use of forest products.
If the economics for maintaining sustainable working forests stop working, we risk losing them. Were it not for private-sector efforts to increase productivity of sustainably managed forests, our climate challenge would be even greater.
When the economics do work, forest area will grow. In North America and Europe, forest area is stable or even increasing, partially offsetting a global decline in forest area mostly due to losses in the tropics. If not for afforestation, restoration of forests, and natural forest expansion from the private sector, the rate of loss would even be faster.
As we develop policies, we must ensure they recognize climate benefits from all forest types, as well as from forest products. Green building policies and codes that discriminate against wood … Or uneconomic requirements imposed on owners of forests or users of forest biomass … are simply wrong-headed.
We talk about saving a tree, when we really mean “save the forest.” On their own, all trees will die and rot and reemit the carbon previously absorbed.
It is time to tap into the power and promise of all forest types. In our excitement about the innovative racehorse of new climate technology or new policy approaches, we should not exclude the work horse — the technology that was already delivering on its promise long before the Vikings made their famous boats.
If we hadn’t already invented sustainable forestry and forest products, we’d be trying to invent them right now.
