California's Carbon Trading Failures

[Mary Booth]

Watch out for California's "gold standard"

Mary

 

http://www.alternet.org/environment/145612

California Carbon Trading Allows Timber Companies to Sell CO2 Credits
for Their Worst Logging Practices
By Eddie Scher, AlterNet
Posted on February 9, 2010, Printed on February 9, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145612/

Public skepticism of carbon trading schemes is growing and judging by
what's happening in California, it is easy to see why. California's
race to be the first state to develop a carbon-trading program comes
at an unacceptable cost for Sierra forests. This fall the California
Air Resources Board (ARB), with prodding from logging companies and
the complicity of some environmental groups, adopted a program that
allows timber companies to sell CO2 credits for their worst logging
practices. But clearcutting has no place in any climate change
solution.

Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI) is one of the nation's largest logging
companies and California's largest private landowner. At a time when
other timber companies are moving away from the practice, SPI embraces
clearcutting as part of their core business plan – clearing 20 to 40
acre swaths of forest, then plowing the earth and spreading herbicides
like Atrazine to kill remaining vegetation. Naturally diverse forests
are replaced with uniform, ‘even-aged' tree plantations that increase
fire risk, ruin watersheds, and disrupt natural carbon sequestration
in soil and biomass. The earth is left scarred with only scattered
debris piles and so-called "ecological islands" – twisted solitary
trees left standing on the barren tract. California law allows
adjacent tracks of forest to be clearcut every five years, leaving a
patchwork of homogenous tree farms where once there was an
ecologically diverse forest.

Clearcutting, as practiced by SPI, Green Diamond Resource Company and
other timber companies, is the North American version of
deforestation. Governor Schwarzenegger, in his speech in Copenhagen in
December, called for local action and California leadership in finding
solutions to climate change. I agree, but I believe that we
Californians need to set a higher bar for leadership, and take a long
hard look at ourselves.

The state of California is developing a carbon trading policy through
a Byzantine complex of government and quasi-government agencies. The
Climate Action Reserve (CAR) is a non-profit carbon-trading broker
with strong ties to the Governor, CalEPA, and the Air Resource Board
(ARB) – the state agency responsible for regulating carbon emissions.
The chair of CAR's board of directors, Linda Adams, is
Schwarzenegger's Secretary of CalEPA, which oversees the Air Resources
Board.

This intertwined relationship between government and a non-government
organization limits transparency and public participation, and allowed
the timber industry to cut a backroom deal forcing clearcutting into
the carbon-trading program. CAR has assumed the very governmental role
of developing carbon-trading protocols, a critical piece of the
state's implementation of AB 32, California's greenhouse gas reduction
law. They've done this with generous input from industry. The most
recent version of the forest carbon trading policy, for example,
originated on the computer of a timber industry operative. And last
fall the Air Resources Board, which is a state agency, adopted the CAR
policy – creating de facto state regulations.

How could this happen? The answer is supply. The carbon market, which
is being proposed as the solution to climate change, depends on a
ready supply of cheap carbon credits. Without the participation of
large private landowners (the largest of which are logging companies),
the burgeoning carbon market could fail for lack of carbon
sequestration supply. Recognizing this fact, the Schwarzenegger
Administration, CAR, ARB, and some environmental groups – desperate to
get carbon trading online – were ready to compromise to secure the
participation of the timber industry. SPI, meanwhile, is in the
business of harvesting trees. So CAR, ARB, and the governor cut a deal
to pay SPI for business as usual practices; the timber industry gets
their cake, and clearcutting too.

In September 2009 the Air Resources Board voted to accept revisions to
CAR's forest carbon trading rules that lay out what land management
and logging practices qualify for carbon credits. This protocol allows
a landowner to sell carbon credits for reforesting areas recovering
from forest fires, preventing conversion of forest lands to housing or
farmlands, and improving their forest harvest practices to "promote
and maintain native forests." This makes sense. But the protocol also
includes provisions that permit landowners to collect credits for
clearcutting, termed "even-aged management."

SPI argues that clearcutting actually benefits forest carbon
sequestration. It's a cynical argument. Clearcutting releases more
carbon than a forest fire, while destroying wildlife habitat and water
quality along with it. The intensity of clearcutting – and the
disturbance of carbon-storing soils and biomass – releases carbon at
levels far greater than less-intensive forms of timber harvesting,
such as commercial thinning. However, the CAR trading program ignores
these emissions, putting them on a ‘punch list' for future study.
Without an accurate accounting of how much carbon is sequestered, the
CAR carbon trading policy lacks integrity and is simply a new revenue
stream for logging companies that fails to reduce greenhouse gases.

Even though some CAR and ARB board members acknowledged problems with
the clearcutting provision this fall, both bodies refused to delay
action on the protocols. The reason became apparent soon after the
protocols were adopted. In October, Governor Schwarzenegger and SPI
jointly announced that the company was embarking on what they
described as the largest forest carbon project in the nation's
history. The deal, made possible by the new forests protocol, involves
60,000 acres of SPI land in California and will purportedly sequester
1.5 million tons of CO2. The LA Times estimated that the carbon sale
could be worth as much as $10 million to SPI.

Supporters for California's carbon trading policy refer to it as the
"gold standard" and hope to export it around the nation and around the
world. But, in the end, California's carbon-trading policy delivers
logging companies a new revenue stream without requiring any changes
in their worst forestry practices. What we get is more clearcutting,
less carbon sequestration, and a trading policy that discredits the
entire concept of carbon offsets. We cannot clearcut our way out of
climate change. In fact, we shouldn't allow clearcutting at all.






Eddie Scher is a longtime environmental advocate, writer, and former
editor of Waterkeeper magazine.
© 2010 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/145612/

--
"Concrete is heavy; iron is hard--but the grass will prevail." - Ed Abbey

_______________________________________________
Biomass Opponents (bio...@energyjustice.net) -- http://www.energyjustice.net/biomass/
Change your settings or access the archives at:
http://mail.energyjustice.net/mailman/listinfo/biomass_energyjustice.net

--

Mary S. Booth, PhD
mbo...@massenvironmentalenergy.org
**********************************************
check out our website:
www.massenvironmentalenergy.org

[mandchurley]

Yikes.  We must not let them export that idea here.   Yikes.   Claudia

[cthomp...@comcast.net]

Not much need to worry. Most larger landowners find the Climate Action Reserve requirements impractical and not economically viable anyway. Charlie Thompson

[Fred Heyes]

i would not waste even a slight thought on this ..it is a non starter here

 

fred

---

From: forestfutur...@googlegroups.com [mailto:forestfutur...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of mandchurley
Sent: Monday, February 15, 2010 12:04 PM
To: forestfutur...@googlegroups.com; forest-futures-advisor...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: California's Carbon Trading Failures

No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 8.5.435 / Virus Database: 271.1.1/2689 - Release Date: 02/15/10 07:35:00

[Joseph Zorzin]

But we are seeing a beginning of carbon trading in this region- I just haven't followed it closely as I don't like the idea of carbon trading at all. Since I haven't followed local developments I don't know what the regional/local rules will be.

 

Some outfit recently offered a presentation to foresters on the subject- at a cost of $50 I think.

 

If anyone reading this knows how carbon credits for local landowners will work- it would be instructive to all of us to see an explanation.

 

It probably won't offer credits for clearcutting- but you never know, it may be worth wasting a slight thought on it- just to be sure.

Joe

[Tim Fohl]

Hi,

I keep telling myself to let it lie but this carbon obsession keeps popping up in ever more noxious ways. This carbon offset stuff is a complete racket as is being demonstrated. 

The so called deniers have been accused of everything from corruption to holocaust advocates. Not so. Take a look at this. The big cheese in the climate science world now admits that there has not been a significant increase in temperature in the last fifteen years. He also admits that their records are pretty sloppy so I am not sure how he knows this. Atmospheric CO2 has measurably risen for whatever reason over this period. The models that are used to predict all these expected horrors are based on the dominant effect of CO2 on climate. No matter how you spin it they clearly don't work. It is true that the climate has warmed over the past couple hundred years but hanging it all on SUV's is a dead end. Read the following report on the words of the climate sciece leader.

Phil Jones, former head of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, made a number of eye-popping statements to the BBC's climate reporter on Sunday. Data from CRU, where Jones was the chief scientist, is key evidence behind the claim that the growth of cities (which are warmer than countryside) isn't a factor in global warming and was cited by the U.N.'s climate science body to bolster statements about rapid global warming in recent decades.

Jones's latest statements seemed to contradict the CRU's data.

In response to the question, "do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically significant global warming?", Jones said yes, adding that the average increase of 0.12C per year over that time period "is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods."

Jones is nevertheless 100% confident that the climate has warmed, he stated, admitting that the Climate-gate scandal has undermined public confidence in science. The scandal has worn down Jones as well: Since the e-mails emerged -- and were subsequently posted online at www.EastAngliaEmails.com -- Jones has stepped down from his position, been forced to admit that he “misjudged” the handling of requests for information, and even acknowledged contemplating suicide.

Jones also allowed for the possibility that the world as a whole was warmer in medieval times than it is today -- a concession that may also undermine theories that global warming is caused by man.

In addition, Jones admitted that an overall lack of organization, and his poor record keeping and office-tidying skills, had contributed to his reluctance to share data with critics, which he regretted.

Tim Fohl

tf...@tigco.com

Carlisle, MA

978 371 0194

[psl...@frcog.org]

I will be out of the office until February 22, 2010. Sincerely, Peggy Sloan


Peggy Sloan
Director of Planning & Development
Franklin Regional Council of Governments
425 Main Street
Greenfield, MA 01301
413-774-1194 x105
413-774-1195 (fax)
psl...@frcog.org (e-mail)