"Right now there's quite a prevalent myth that's perpetuated by the logging industry and also kind of perpetuated by the government that forestry including logging is a climate solution," Polanyi said.
"It appears that the government is not acknowledging that significant concern which has huge implications for climate policymaking and forest policymaking and Canada's ability to meet its 2030 climate targets," Polanyi said. The disagreement lies in whether these trees, left standing, should be included in the totals - making forestry look like an emissions sink. In 2021 the national inventory estimated these trees absorbed 79 megatonnes. What the estimate doesn't include are trees that the environmental groups argue are being unfairly used to offset the emissions from forestry: trees that have regrown naturally after wildfires and other disturbances, and reached "commercial maturity" - roughly 80 years old or more. old-growth forests for more than a century, SFU study finds For 2021, they estimate forestry emitted 73 megatonnes of CO2-equivalent - almost the same as emissions from the province of Quebec. Polanyi's group, along with U.S.-based Natural Resources Defense Council, has tried to calculate the emissions related to forestry using figures in Canada's national inventory report, the annual accounting of the country's greenhouse gas emissions. This could include wood burned for heat and energy, paper being put into the garbage and long-lived wood products like furniture that have reached the end of their lives and ended up in waste landfills. Trees, as kids today learn in school, absorb carbon as they grow - so forests are often called carbon sinks.īut when trees die, from logging or other means, their carbon is eventually lost into the atmosphere as the wood is burned or decomposes. Michael Polanyi, campaigner with Nature Canada, says accurately reporting forest emissions would lead to better government policy to cut those emissions.
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