Diversion is a cornerstone strategy of denialists. And forest offsetting has given us mostly diversion - notwithstanding decades of hard work by many talented people. Now we're out of time. Out of time for offsets, tax credits, net zero pledging, net zero portfolios, new climate disclosure, etc, etc. What if all work on those things was mothballed for 2025 and the world's climate talent, in all institutional domains including corporate and financial, simply focuses on building:
A Roadmap to Globally Aligned (compliance, economy-wide, upstream) Carbon Prices in operation by 2030.
Please describe a path to mid-century climate stability, with a functioning global economy, without that in place. Success likely requires US leadership and that, for at least 34 years since Hansen in Congress, has been a tough nut to crack.
REDD+ can be revitalized later.…so please, next year, all hands on deck for globally aligned carbon prices. Hope springs eternal…but that's my hope.
In the meantime, Zeke, SBTI is keeping the forest offsetting genie in the bottle, but I fear that damn could someday break as corporate pressure intensifies - and membership growth stalls or reverses. Your points would be great to bring to them.
Those who complain about forest C durability literally cannot see the forests for the trees. The basis for such claims is filled with extrapolation errors and a fundamental lack of understanding of how forests actually function. Studies in the Wind River Experimental Forests have shown C accumulations in forests continue to accumulate for at least 500 years despite the various natural disturbance process that accelerate (temporarily) rates of both mortality AND corresponding rates of growth. Other studies show at the landscape scale, forests can typically persist for millennia. Similarly, natural regeneration is not a panacea - the accelerated fire and pestilence rates along the west slope of the Sierras is a good example, largely due to poorly managed lands where natural regeneration led to type conversion that significantly altered the forest structure and ecosystem dynamics (historically pine-dominated fire-resistant forests replaced with predominantly fir-dominated fire-prone forests). Effective forest management can significantly decrease rates of mortality (C emissions) while increasing rates of growth (C sequestration) at the forest-wide scale by managing forest structure, composition, and rates of growth / yield. It can do so in ways that deliver reliably net-positive C building materials, habitat, water quality, and other ecosystem services. But forestry solutions require funding (surprising modest given the benefits). And it must mature beyond the gross oversimplifications and extrapolations of the carbon accountants.
We need to aim for eventual removal of CO2 from the atmosphere, but that will mean using energy to fix CO2 into minerals that can be truly sequestered for thousands of years if not millennia. One of the additional advantages of taxing net CO2 emissions is that it created an incentive for such permanent sequestration.
Does this imply that reforestation is a much more suitable offset for methane and similair emmisions, rthaer than CO2 itself? Methane being a ‘pulse’ GHG that has a large short term effect but limited long term, much like moving forward (or saturating) forest growth removals?
This is such a well put article that reveals an important concept. Forests are arguably one of the most important things to protect that we have. Creating offsets for forest planting that would regenerate anyway without intervention obscures the value of offsetting carbon emission in the first place. Great article. Thank you!
Your hypothetical graphs and links to your own opinion pieces is an embarrassing tribute to the title you hold and earned reputation. Complete misinformation throughout your piece and history of work. Looking forward to your future articles suggesting we should maybe just burn down all the forests and be done with it! :)
Thanks for the helpful analysis. The bottom line is we must reduce fossil fuel consumption as quickly as possible. In a society where money can control speech and legislation, it's very easy for the fossil fuel industry to erect numerous blockades to any meaningful action. The political challenges are just as difficult as the technical ones. Both must be addressed, and quickly.
I think the next 20 years are crucial. Carbon emission are too high, James Hansen showed that warming accelerated and it might accelerate even more. We could get into very dangerous temperatures which will destabilize atmosphere. It's better to have many forests growing fast, if some will burn, let's plan more forests just in case. They could avoid the highest temperature peak, and then renewable energies will really be efficient. Forests are also useful because they stabilize and enrich soil, farmers use fertile soils made by forests and slowly loose carbon from these soils.
The way I explained the problem (over 10 years ago) to a bunch of church folk is that there is a natural carbon cycle: a plant takes carbon from the atmosphere to grow. It gets eaten - sometimes by an animal that harvests it and sometimes by microbes after it dies of old age (or whatever). Either way, that carbon gets "exhaled" by the animal that ate it back into the atmosphere. (Sure it's more complicated than that, but essentially that's what happens.)
What humans are doing now is extracting carbon from deep in the earth (that otherwise would be nicely sequestered underground) and burning it, adding that carbon to the atmosphere, messing with the previous balance. We need to stop doing that if we're going to stop messing with the chemistry of the atmosphere.
An oversimplification? Absolutely. But people got it.
Thanks for a scientific article that backs up my decade+ old explanation.
The counterfactual natural regrowth is also itself in question, and is at least, more ambiguous than the article indicates. For example, in British Columbia Canada, there are over 6 million hectares burned in fires in the past few years. The majority of these area will be left to naturally regenerate. This may have been an adequate policy in the past, but the situation now is that geographic based seed is offsite - local seed is maladapted to the climate flux of the next hundred years. The other component in British Columbia particularly, is that these landscapes are likely to regenerate huge tracts of dense, (maladapted) lodgepole pine, which is setting up the landscape for future wildfires, etc. For temperate and boreal forests, maladaption of local seed sources/tree species constrains natural regeneration as an option for carbon sequestration, and climate adaptation more broadly.
Can reforestation ever draw down as much Carbon as prior deforestation released without sacrifice of agricultural land?
The successes of reforestation should count towards land use emissions reductions, a success of the land use sector - NOT used to justify continuing fossil fuel emissions. It seems to me if it isn't replacing fossil fuel burning with low emissions energy ie reducing emissions it isn't addressing the fundamental problem. Carbon offsets and CCS appear primarily used to NOT address it.
I'm concerned that those claiming the benefits for reforestation are not picking the best trees for such efforts. There's also the need for some thought for the impacts of climate change that will compel us to open up new areas for agriculture and food production where such activities were not previously possible under the then climate.
Diversion is a cornerstone strategy of denialists. And forest offsetting has given us mostly diversion - notwithstanding decades of hard work by many talented people. Now we're out of time. Out of time for offsets, tax credits, net zero pledging, net zero portfolios, new climate disclosure, etc, etc. What if all work on those things was mothballed for 2025 and the world's climate talent, in all institutional domains including corporate and financial, simply focuses on building:
A Roadmap to Globally Aligned (compliance, economy-wide, upstream) Carbon Prices in operation by 2030.
Please describe a path to mid-century climate stability, with a functioning global economy, without that in place. Success likely requires US leadership and that, for at least 34 years since Hansen in Congress, has been a tough nut to crack.
REDD+ can be revitalized later.…so please, next year, all hands on deck for globally aligned carbon prices. Hope springs eternal…but that's my hope.
In the meantime, Zeke, SBTI is keeping the forest offsetting genie in the bottle, but I fear that damn could someday break as corporate pressure intensifies - and membership growth stalls or reverses. Your points would be great to bring to them.
Those who complain about forest C durability literally cannot see the forests for the trees. The basis for such claims is filled with extrapolation errors and a fundamental lack of understanding of how forests actually function. Studies in the Wind River Experimental Forests have shown C accumulations in forests continue to accumulate for at least 500 years despite the various natural disturbance process that accelerate (temporarily) rates of both mortality AND corresponding rates of growth. Other studies show at the landscape scale, forests can typically persist for millennia. Similarly, natural regeneration is not a panacea - the accelerated fire and pestilence rates along the west slope of the Sierras is a good example, largely due to poorly managed lands where natural regeneration led to type conversion that significantly altered the forest structure and ecosystem dynamics (historically pine-dominated fire-resistant forests replaced with predominantly fir-dominated fire-prone forests). Effective forest management can significantly decrease rates of mortality (C emissions) while increasing rates of growth (C sequestration) at the forest-wide scale by managing forest structure, composition, and rates of growth / yield. It can do so in ways that deliver reliably net-positive C building materials, habitat, water quality, and other ecosystem services. But forestry solutions require funding (surprising modest given the benefits). And it must mature beyond the gross oversimplifications and extrapolations of the carbon accountants.
We need to aim for eventual removal of CO2 from the atmosphere, but that will mean using energy to fix CO2 into minerals that can be truly sequestered for thousands of years if not millennia. One of the additional advantages of taxing net CO2 emissions is that it created an incentive for such permanent sequestration.
Does this imply that reforestation is a much more suitable offset for methane and similair emmisions, rthaer than CO2 itself? Methane being a ‘pulse’ GHG that has a large short term effect but limited long term, much like moving forward (or saturating) forest growth removals?
This is such a well put article that reveals an important concept. Forests are arguably one of the most important things to protect that we have. Creating offsets for forest planting that would regenerate anyway without intervention obscures the value of offsetting carbon emission in the first place. Great article. Thank you!
Your hypothetical graphs and links to your own opinion pieces is an embarrassing tribute to the title you hold and earned reputation. Complete misinformation throughout your piece and history of work. Looking forward to your future articles suggesting we should maybe just burn down all the forests and be done with it! :)
Thanks for the helpful analysis. The bottom line is we must reduce fossil fuel consumption as quickly as possible. In a society where money can control speech and legislation, it's very easy for the fossil fuel industry to erect numerous blockades to any meaningful action. The political challenges are just as difficult as the technical ones. Both must be addressed, and quickly.
I think the next 20 years are crucial. Carbon emission are too high, James Hansen showed that warming accelerated and it might accelerate even more. We could get into very dangerous temperatures which will destabilize atmosphere. It's better to have many forests growing fast, if some will burn, let's plan more forests just in case. They could avoid the highest temperature peak, and then renewable energies will really be efficient. Forests are also useful because they stabilize and enrich soil, farmers use fertile soils made by forests and slowly loose carbon from these soils.
The way I explained the problem (over 10 years ago) to a bunch of church folk is that there is a natural carbon cycle: a plant takes carbon from the atmosphere to grow. It gets eaten - sometimes by an animal that harvests it and sometimes by microbes after it dies of old age (or whatever). Either way, that carbon gets "exhaled" by the animal that ate it back into the atmosphere. (Sure it's more complicated than that, but essentially that's what happens.)
What humans are doing now is extracting carbon from deep in the earth (that otherwise would be nicely sequestered underground) and burning it, adding that carbon to the atmosphere, messing with the previous balance. We need to stop doing that if we're going to stop messing with the chemistry of the atmosphere.
An oversimplification? Absolutely. But people got it.
Thanks for a scientific article that backs up my decade+ old explanation.
The counterfactual natural regrowth is also itself in question, and is at least, more ambiguous than the article indicates. For example, in British Columbia Canada, there are over 6 million hectares burned in fires in the past few years. The majority of these area will be left to naturally regenerate. This may have been an adequate policy in the past, but the situation now is that geographic based seed is offsite - local seed is maladapted to the climate flux of the next hundred years. The other component in British Columbia particularly, is that these landscapes are likely to regenerate huge tracts of dense, (maladapted) lodgepole pine, which is setting up the landscape for future wildfires, etc. For temperate and boreal forests, maladaption of local seed sources/tree species constrains natural regeneration as an option for carbon sequestration, and climate adaptation more broadly.
Can reforestation ever draw down as much Carbon as prior deforestation released without sacrifice of agricultural land?
The successes of reforestation should count towards land use emissions reductions, a success of the land use sector - NOT used to justify continuing fossil fuel emissions. It seems to me if it isn't replacing fossil fuel burning with low emissions energy ie reducing emissions it isn't addressing the fundamental problem. Carbon offsets and CCS appear primarily used to NOT address it.
Greenwishing and Greenwashing are inevitable, when we can’t measure or verify emissions. P.S. Fraud isn’t far behind.
I'm concerned that those claiming the benefits for reforestation are not picking the best trees for such efforts. There's also the need for some thought for the impacts of climate change that will compel us to open up new areas for agriculture and food production where such activities were not previously possible under the then climate.