I have a confession to make:  I am a tree-hugger.
Yes, I’m sure I elicited guffaws from certain quarters when some weeks ago I used this space to identify myself as an environmentalist. There are those would disqualify from the ranks of environmentalists anyone who favors development of oil and gas resources to meet our energy needs. I threw the term out there in my attempt to point out that renewables are not always good for the environment, with the subtext that the term “environmentalist” has ceased to have any real meaning.*

But I love trees. As a boy, I often roamed alone in nearby woods just to “explore.” I still bear a few childhood scars from the backyard pecan tree I favored for climbing. (For the record, pecan tree branches are notoriously fragile when one is pretending to be Tarzan swinging through the jungle). I have backpacked in rain forests from Alaska to the Amazon, in woods from the Sierras to the Grand Tetons to the Rockies to the Ozarks. I mourned the loss of much of Tulsa’s urban forest canopy due the massively destructive ice storm of last December. I have given the Shel Silverstein book The Giving Tree as a gift more often than any other kind to children, including my own. Joyce Kilmer may not rank with Keats or Shelley as a poet, but he was spot on in his sentiments about trees.

I was especially appalled when the frantic rush to anoint biofuels as the magic bullet to address energy and climate change issues resulted in the destruction of huge swathes of pristine rain forest in Asia for the sake of producing more palm oil to be used for biodiesel in Europe. Even the environmental pressure groups wouldn’t give that snafu a pass.

Now there is new evidence emerging that trees may play a key role in addressing climate change concerns.

I won’t revisit my usual sniping at the climate change alarmist bunch. Let’s assume, just for the sake of argument—and that argument not only isn’t over, it seems to be getting louder—that greenhouse gas-induced global warming is accelerating at a dangerous pace, and we have to do something about it. All the screeching back and forth about Kyoto’s flaws and costs and ending our addiction to fossil fuels isn’t getting us anywhere.

Here’s a notion that we can all agree on: Why don’t we plant more trees and better manage the timber resources we already have to help mitigate carbon emissions?  The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has concluded that “a sustainable forest management strategy aimed at maintaining or increasing forest carbon stocks, while producing an annual sustained yield of timber fiber or energy from the forest, will generate the largest sustained mitigation benefit.”

In a new study by the Institute for Climate & Atmospheric Science at Leeds University in the UK, scientists found that forests produce particles of terpene compounds (which give pine trees their distinctive smell). These terpene particles reflect sunlight back to space and make clouds brighter, which acts to cool the climate. In a study published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, institute scientists Dominick Spracklen and Ken Carslaw have shown that these forest-derived particles could exert a considerable cooling effect that may offset the warming. Hmmm. Maybe we could synthesize these compounds and seed clouds everywhere with them.

There’s more. Researchers at Södra, a Swedish company that is Europe’s largest producer of wood pulp, claim that if half the world’s forests were run like Sweden’s, the entire greenhouse effect could be eliminated. They contend that a radical overhaul of global forestry along Swedish lines would see carbon locked in a growing reserve of timber rather than remain in the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide.

According to Södra’s siviculture manager, Göran Örlander, “The world’s forests cover some 4 billion hectares. We could increase forest growth by more than 1% per year across half of this area (only half of the world’s forests are suitable for management based on the Swedish model). To implement this, we would need to break the negative trends of deforestation, forest damage, and poor forest management on a global basis, but we’d be rewarded with an increase in carbon uptake of almost 2 billion tonnes per year.”

Continuous growth of 1% in half the world’s forests could halt growth in emissions of CO2 altogether, possibly within as little as 20 years, the Swedish company says. And it isn’t promoting a ban on cutting down trees to get there. Because timber is Sweden’s most valuable resource, intelligent forestry management is a must—and Sweden manages to increase the amount of timber in its forests every year even as it constantly harvests more.

But the Swedes are the exception. Every year, 7 million hectares of forest are felled, Södra estimates—the worst case being Southeast Asia, which has lost almost 1% of its forest every year in the past 20 years. Everyone agrees that mindless deforestation is a bad thing. The World Resources Institute has estimated that during the past 150 years, deforestation has contributed about 30% of the atmospheric build-up of CO2.

While I am reluctant to resort to business buzzwords, maybe it is time to “think outside the box” on the conjoined issues of energy and climate change.  If that box is made from Swedish wood, so much the better, because it contributes to the global economy.

And even if afforestation and reforestation don’t provide a magic bullet to end the purported climate crisis once and for all—well, hey, it couldn’t hurt. That was the usual verdict on moms serving sick kids chicken soup—until science caught up with Mom’s wisdom and found that, yes, chicken soup contains compounds with health benefits to ameliorate colds.

So let’s try to open our minds to possible out-of-left-field solutions that might just work without having to wreak havoc on an already stressed economy.

And go hug a tree—preferably one you’ve planted.

*http://www.pennwellblogs.com/pennenergy_perspectives/2008-09-29/renewable-good-for-the-environment-not-always/

Tags: afforestation, climate change, deforestation, forest management, fossil fuels, reforestation, terpenes, trees' role in greenhouse effect

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