CO2 emissions from forestry are a surging climate threat. Ottawa needs to act

By Barry Saxifrage
National Observer
November 2, 2020
Category: Carbon, Climate & Bioenergy
Region: Canada

Canada’s vast managed forest lands used to be critical allies in our climate fight and efforts to build a sustainable, carbon neutral forestry economy. That’s because these forests used to be healthy enough to absorb the huge amounts of CO2 created by the logging industry’s harvests — plus lots more. This huge forest carbon sink benefited us in many ways in addition to climate safety. …Unfortunately for all of us, our forests’ deep and valuable carbon sink has nearly dried up. Decades of human abuses — from climate disruption to clearcutting — have left them too battered and weakened to even keep up with business-as-usual logging. Put simply: Our continent-spanning managed forests are now being cut down faster than they are growing back. The result has been a rising flood of CO2 pouring out of our managed forests and accumulating in our atmosphere — worsening both the climate and ocean acidification crises. [This publication allows a limited number of stories for non-subscribers]

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