Losing Our Carbon Sinks: Why We Must Defend Our Forests
“It makes no sense to clearcut one of the world’s most important tools for fighting climate change.” — Anthony Swift, NRDC¹
Healthy forests are one of the best resources we have to fight climate change. Our forests can capture and store massive amounts of carbon (which is why we call them ‘carbon sinks’). They help mitigate human-caused carbon emissions, the resulting global warming, and the myriad effects of this climate crisis.
But in California, big timber companies are using a destructive logging method called clearcutting to harvest as much profit from the land as fast as possible, while destroying our forests’ ability to serve as carbon sinks and fight climate change.
The Cost of Carbon and Climate Change
Our forests provide a critical benefit to us by removing carbon dioxide (CO2) — a greenhouse gas that contributes to human-caused global warming and climate breakdown — from the atmosphere and storing the carbon in trunks, branches, leaves, and the soil.
According to a recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), human activities since the Industrial Revolution have already caused around a 1.0°C increase in global temperatures from pre-industrial levels. An even more recent report shows that this number might actually be around 1.25°C.
Should we reach a 1.5°C temperature rise above pre-industrial levels, IPCC scientists confirm with high confidence that there will continue to be significant impacts: more extreme temperatures; melting ice caps and sea-level rise; increased wildfires, drought, and flooding; ecosystem loss; ocean acidification; an influx of invasive species and disease; and biodiversity loss. And if we surpass 1.5°C of warming, the dangerous effects will get significantly more intense.
To put it in economic terms, a 2020 study from the University of Chicago found that the social cost of carbon — an estimate of the financial impact of current carbon emissions — is much longer-lasting and heavier than we usually imagine. While typical estimates for the social cost of carbon have, until now, sat at around $100 per ton, the researchers found that the ultimate cost of carbon is likely closer to $100,000 per ton. These costs will result from increased health care needs, destruction of property, increased food prices, forced migration, and more.
For context, researchers from the University of Oxford tell us that today, we globally emit over 36 billion tons of carbon each year. According to the new cost per ton estimate, this many emissions will amount to a yearly social cost of carbon of $3,600,000,000,000,000 — a price that is 172 times greater than the total United States GDP in 2020.
However, if we can minimize the temperature rise, the risks of anthropogenic carbon emissions and climate change will be significantly reduced. Consider the Arctic sea ice cover, for instance, which is often looked at as a strong indicator of the state of global warming. With 1.5°C of warming, IPCC scientists estimate that the Arctic will see one summer per century without any sea ice cover. But after a 2°C temperature rise, the impact may be ten times greater, with the scientists expecting at least one sea ice-free summer per decade.
Confronting these risks will require drastic changes. To limit global warming to 1.5°C, the IPCC report tells us that we need to reduce global anthropogenic CO2 levels by 45% from their 2010 levels by 2030, and reach zero emissions by 2050.
In the face of this challenge, we must take every step possible to make our communities as sustainable as possible. For Californians, this means holding timber companies accountable for the global impact of their harvests — and protecting our forest carbon sinks by bringing an end to clearcutting.
Clearcutting: The Most Destructive Logging Method
Californian forests store just over 2 billion metric tons of carbon.² Yet timber companies are harvesting trees unsustainably by clearcutting, leaving lush green woodlands barren for the sake of collecting every harvestable tree and making a short-term profit.
Clearcutting is an extreme logging method in which resilient natural forests are harvested and replaced with man-made, even-aged tree plantations. It releases the carbon stored by older trees and replaces the original forest with seedlings that have little ability to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Moreover, about half of the carbon stored by forests is in the earth, and during the heavy disturbance of a clearcut, this carbon that is stored in the soils and roots is also released into the atmosphere. The practice creates more CO2 emissions than any other form of logging.
Since 1997, over 1 million acres in California have been decimated by clearcutting and related logging practices. At the current rate, more than 50,000 acres of California forest are clearcut every year.³
To mitigate our global carbon emissions and the effects of global warming, we need to rely on a range of adaptations — and one of the most significant of these is letting our forests thrive. Forests annually remove 30% of global anthropogenic CO2 emissions, a power that only our oceans can rival. Moreover, a 2020 study found that the potential for forests to accumulate carbon has likely been underestimated by the IPCC by 32% — meaning our forests are even more important for fighting the climate crisis than we give them credit for.
We must ask our officials and private timber companies to do better when it comes to protecting our forests. There are more sustainable logging methods than clearcutting. For instance, selective logging allows for individual trees to be logged, while maintaining continual canopy cover — and maintaining more carbon storage.
“Forests are the only carbon capture and storage ‘technology’ we have in our grasp that is safe, proven, inexpensive, immediately available at scale, and capable of providing beneficial ripple effects, from regulating rainfall patterns to providing livelihoods to indigenous communities” — Alessandro Baccini, Woods Hole Research Center⁴
The Power to Build Resilience
We must tackle this problem now: the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) just released a report showing that 2020 tied with 2016 as the hottest year on record yet, and 2011–2020 was the warmest decade yet recorded.
Anthropogenic global warming and the climate crisis will continue to intensify climate-related risks to health, livelihoods, food security, and water supply. These are impacts that, in many cases, will be disproportionately felt by low-income and marginalized communities. The lower we can keep the temperature, the more time we may have to adapt.
As we face the climate crisis, we must do everything in our power to build resilient ecosystems and communities — and that includes requiring timber companies to put aside short-term profits and choose sustainable logging methods, instead of decimating our forest carbon sinks.
Take Action to Stop Clearcutting
The Sierra Club Stop Clearcutting CA campaign is working to educate and engage the public, lawmakers, and regulators in California about the damage caused by widespread industrial clearcutting, as well as advocate for alternatives to clearcutting for the long-term sustainability of forest ecosystems throughout the state. Here are some ways you can join the fight:
- Like us on facebook.com/StopClearcuttingCA and share with your network
- Follow @noclearcuts on Twitter and Instagram, and share our posts with your friends
- Sign our petition to Governor Newsom demanding a prohibition on clearcutting California forests, and ask your friends to sign
Please email forests@lomaprieta.sierraclub.org for more information.
[1] Melissa Denchak, “Want to Fight Climate Change? Stop Clearcutting Our Carbon Sinks,” NRDC, last modified December 13, 2017, https://www.nrdc.org/stories/stop-clearcutting-carbon-sinks.
[2] Obi Kauffman, The Forests of California (Berkeley, Heyday, 2020), 21.
[3] Statistics compiled from data provided by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
[4] Sean Duffy, “Deforestation Has Turned Forests From Carbon Sinks to Emitters,” Courthouse News, last modified September 28, 2017, https://www.courthousenews.com/deforestation-turned-forests-carbon-sinks-emitters/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CForests%20are%20the%20only%20carbon,communities%2C%E2%80%9D%20said%20lead%20author%20Alessandro
Indigenous land mapping source: https://native-land.ca/
