The global climate crisis is forcing us to restructure our thinking about almost everything we do. In the last two centuries, rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, the single most influential greenhouse gas, have risen from 280 parts per million to 419 ppm, and are now threatening to literally cook us off the planet. At the seemingly modest temperature rise of 1.2°C, we are already starting to experience the disastrous effects on climate, species, ocean levels, weather patterns, food production, human health, and our general sense of physical and psychological wellbeing. Meanwhile, as carbon dioxide emissions continue to go up rather than down, the circumstances invite a paradigm shift in our thinking.
Continue reading The Quadra Project: Logging’s Carbon – Part 1Tag Archives: forests emitting carbon
Talk Is Cheap, Part 1: BC Fails to Fulfill its Carbon, Climate, Forestry Promises
The government of Canada, and the BC government, state publicly that they are committed to carbon reduction and proactive responses to climate change; yet both Canada and BC remain consistently among the world’s top carbon emitters per capita. In 2019 Canada was the world’s highest carbon emitter per capita.
On the one hand, our government proposes initiatives that would improve energy efficiency and reduce emissions — in sectors like transportation and construction. But on the other hand, they continue to subsidise existing and new fossil-fuel projects such as LNG Canada and the Coastal Gaslink pipeline — to expand fracking.
Canada’s Liberal government spent $4.5B to purchase the Trans-Mountain Pipeline in 2018, only to announce in Spring 2022 that no further funding would be allocated to the project as cost overruns neared 70%. But wasting money may be the least of our problems. These fossil-fuel projects have huge carbon impacts.
Continue reading Talk Is Cheap, Part 1: BC Fails to Fulfill its Carbon, Climate, Forestry Promises
The Quadra Project: Challenging the way people think about forestry
Prior to embarking upon a literary career in 1985, Ray Grigg taught English, literary history, fine arts and comparative world religions in British Columbia’s High School system. Since then, he has written a long list of books on Taoism, Zen and environmental issues. Grigg was also the author of a column called ‘Shades of Green,’ which ran in the Campbell River Courier-Islander for 15 years. A little over half a year ago, he started writing a series of articles called ‘the Quadra Project.’
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Climate questions about Mosaic harvest plans
By Barry Saxifrage
To: Colin Koszman, Land Use Forester at Mosaic
From: Barry Saxifrage, resident of Cortes Island
Re: Mosaic’s harvest plans on Cortes Island (Feb 8, 2022).
Thank you for your Zoom presentation and flyer emailed to the Cortes Island community. I have some questions about the climate emissions from your planned harvesting. Each question has a brief discussion below it. An extended discussion with additional supporting data is at the end.
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Forests and Climate Crisis
Are Forests in crisis because of changes in our climate, or is the Climate in crisis due to changes in the worlds forests?
Continue reading Forests and Climate Crisis