Mitigation efforts always sound sensible to sensible people. There are always people who have a knee jerk, industry involved NO WAY reaction. Just like with cigarettes: doesn’t cause it -you can’t prove it, to ok maybe it exists but there is nothing you can do about it, to those methods won’t work, to if you outlaw it you will put people out of work. But most people (as far as the carbon economy goes) Carbon Taxes, Carbon Trading and Carbon Reduction methods all seem OK. But how can you tell if they work, or in this case DON’T?
New research shows that California’s climate policy created up to 39 million carbon credits that aren’t achieving real carbon savings. But companies can buy these forest offsets to justify polluting more anyway.
This story was co-published with MIT Technology Review.
Along the coast of Northern California near the Oregon border, the cool, moist air off the Pacific sustains a strip of temperate rainforests. Soaring redwoods and Douglas firs dominate these thick, wet woodlands, creating a canopy hundreds of feet high.
But if you travel inland the mix of trees gradually shifts.
Beyond the crest of the Klamath Mountains, you descend into an evergreen medley of sugar pines, incense cedars and still more Douglas firs. As you continue into the Cascade Range, you pass through sparser forests dominated by Ponderosa pines. These tall, slender trees with prickly cones thrive in the hotter, drier conditions on the eastern side of the state.
All trees consume carbon dioxide, releasing the oxygen and storing the carbon in their trunks, branches and roots. Every ton of carbon sequestered in a living tree is a ton that isn’t contributing to climate change. And that thick coastal forest can easily store twice as much carbon per acre as the trees deeper inland.
Go there and read probably a gazillion words. Take a weekend. More next week.