[ad_1]
A coalition of over 70 environmental groups launched Tuesday a joint campaign to call on President Biden, asking him to stop the logging of old-growth trees on federal lands as a way of combating climate change. Trees absorb carbon dioxide, which is the most common greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. Older trees store more carbon dioxide than newer ones, because they are larger.
The campaign aims at persuading the U.S. Forest Service, which is a division of Department of Agriculture and manages approximately 20 percent of America’s forest land, to identify mature trees and protect them. Experts estimate that 95 percent of America’s forests have been lost since European colonization. Although some areas have been protected, there is no blanket ban on the logging of old-growth trees within Forest Service land.
“The Forest Service has indicated they are rolling around this idea of how to address climate through the Forest Service, and they’re looking at an administrative rulemaking to do that,” Kirin Kennedy, director of People and Nature Policy at the Sierra Club, told Yahoo News. “We’re simply saying: If you’re going to do some rulemaking around climate, that one avenue is to look at old-growth trees and mature trees.”
Although cutting down trees and using them for lumber doesn’t release as much carbon than burning them, 30% of the carbon is released when they are chopped down. This is partly because the roots are removed from the soil.
Environmental activists also point out that older forests provide shade and cooler temperatures. Less prone to wildfires. Microclimates that are unaffected, such as old-growth forest, also work well support greater biodiversity. Logging on National Forest Service land is possible Endangering the water supplyFor the 60 Million AmericansThe land from which the water is drawn.
“Reducing emissions alone is an insufficient strategy for addressing the climate crisis we face today — the US must also sequester and store significant amounts of legacy emissions from the atmosphere,” the Sierra Club, one of the member organizations in the Climate Forests campaign, wrote in a memo that it distributed on Wednesday morning.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to keep average global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius and prevent catastrophic climate change, not only must greenhouse gas emissions be reduced rapidly, but also greenhouse gases that are already present in the atmosphere. Although technology exists to capture carbon from the air and store it underground in a commercial facility, this technology has not been commercially available. IcelandThis is partly because the cost of construction is still high.
“While there are numerous promising technologies that can help us meet this need in the future, our best near-term opportunities are natural climate solutions that enable us to store vast amounts of carbon in our forests,” the Sierra Club wrote. “Protecting and recovering mature growth forests is a simple, cost-effective climate solution and a climate forest policy is the missing piece of US efforts to address the climate crisis.”
Obviously, future administrations can repeal any action taken to protect trees. For example, the Trump administration will repeal any action to protect trees in 2020. 9 million acres openedDevelopment of the Tongass National Forest, Alaska. The Biden administration was inaugurated in November. Restoring was suggestedPreviously granted protections to this area.
Kennedy said that activists had met with the Forest Service in order to make their case for old-growth tree protection, but it is unclear if the agency will follow their lead. The Department of Agriculture did no immediate respond to a request for comment.
