Michael Polanyi

In 2019, more than three-quarters of a million hectares of forests were logged in Canada—the equivalent of more than nine NHL hockey rinks every minute. Logging removes vast amounts of carbon from forests—the majority of which ends up in the atmosphere within a year or two. But the federal government’s latest National Inventory Report (NIR) states that net greenhouse gas emissions from human activities in forests were slightly less than zero in 2020. …In other words, Canada considers the forestry sector to have minimal emissions. Accordingly, Canada’s new 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan does not even discuss ways to reduce emissions from logging. How can large-scale logging, which mostly involves clearcutting of carbon-rich primary forests, be carbon neutral? There is a growing recognition that this scientifically implausible claim rests on biased forest carbon accounting policies that are hiding the true climate impacts of logging. …It’s time, therefore, for Canada to stop falsely portraying logging as a low-carbon sector… [A subscription to the Hill Times is required to read access this full story]