Environmental scientists have long argued that the most serious of our global climate problems could be solved if we just planted a trillion trees to absorb our excessive carbon dioxide emissions—trees are the best known device for this purpose. Yet, just as we desperately need them, we are busy cutting them down.

Now Mosaic, one of Canada’s largest timber companies, has just announced (Globe and Mail, March 22, 2022) that it intends to end logging in 40,000 hectares of British Columbia’s coastal forests in exchange for carbon credits—at least for 25 years.

The carbon credit process works by the emitters of carbon paying the storers of carbon a fee for this service. In the case of Mosaic’s “BigCoast Forest Climate Initiative”, it expects to earn $100 million to $300 million, given the current price of carbon credits. Mosaic’s chief forester, Domenico Iannidinardo, said: “We expect to make at least as much from the BigCoast initiative as we would earn from harvesting these forests.”

According to Mr. Iannidinardo, Mosaic will be extending this carbon credit option to other B.C. forest managers and to First Nations, so they too can add their timberlands to the BigCoast initiative. Katrine Conroy, B.C.’s Minister of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development—soon to be the Minister of Forests, again—said in a news release that BigCoast “promises to deliver real benefits for primary forests throughout coastal British Columbia.” And Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Steven Guilbeault, said, “Protecting and conserving our old forests like this will go a long way towards tackling the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change.”

From the perspective of our little island in the wholeness of things, the salient point is that Mosaic has now officially recognized that trees are important for the sequestration of carbon—a point that has been made in The Quadra Project, as it argued repeatedly that our best contribution as an island to solving the climate crisis would be to keep our forests standing and growing. In addition to watershed management, ecological diversity, species protection, recreation services, tourist economics, and the psychological health of our community, Mosaic has now confirmed that using our forests for carbon sequestration has both a climate and a moral justification.

Mosaic came to this climate and moral realization through the profit motive, by discovering that it could earn more money by saving trees than by destroying them—anything that makes a profit is acceptable, even if it happens to do some good. While this clearly reveals the ethical values of corporate psychology, it is an improvement over Mosaic’s previous indifference to any consideration of carbon sequestration as an aspect of its business activity on Quadra.

This indifference has not been a part of Quadra’s psychology. Recently, as environmental warnings from authoritative international agencies have reached a crescendo of frantic pleas for corrective action, Islanders have responded with anguish, anxiety, grief and protracted worry. Indeed, if anyone is not worried, they just don’t understand the dire circumstances we have created for ourselves.

March, 2022, was a bad news month. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued another report, “the bleakest warning yet”, that we are missing “a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future.” This demoralizing news has been exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Who are we as a species if, in the midst of an unfolding global environmental catastrophe, we are still compelled to invade a sovereign country and to obliterate it and its people with bombs and missiles? A moment of objective consideration can’t avoid the conclusion that the Russian assault on Ukraine is a sad reminder of humanity’s treatment of our planet’s life-supporting ecosystems.

In the midst of this despair comes the frail hope that Mosaic has temporarily come to its senses, and might be willing to work co-operatively to end its war against Quadra’s forests. Islanders would welcome the recruitment of their trees to old-growth, carbon-storing ecosystems. Such action by Mosaic would be a win for it, for carbon emitters, for the Island community, for the planet, and for politicians. The fact that government ministers from both British Columbia and Canada have endorsed the BigCoast project suggests that such an arrangement could also have political benefits.

Politicians don’t like trouble. Neither do corporations. But, on Quadra Island, as elsewhere, the pressure is building for change to be commensurate with the severity of the environmental crisis. It doesn’t help that Mosaic’s industrial activity on Quadra offers almost no benefits to Islanders. Instead, its presence is exploitive, disruptive and degrading, a persistent reminder of the unfolding threat that erodes hope, increases frustration and fuels desperation.

Mosaic’s carbon credit project offers a way out of this dilemma. Because its operations on Quadra are in a Tree Farm Licence, Mosaic will likely argue that such a project can’t be implemented here. But this obstacle can be overcome—by Mosaic if it is willing to use the same diligence with which it conducts its logging business, and by Quadra Islanders if we are willing to protect our forests with all the measures at our disposal. We all have a moral duty to slow our suicidal plunge into the ecological Dark Ages.

Ray Grigg for Sierra Quadra

Top photo credit: Green Lungs by Mynatour via Flickr (CC BY SA, 2.0 License)

Sign-up for Cortes Currents email-out:

To receive an emailed catalogue of articles on Cortes Currents, send a (blank) email to subscribe to your desired frequency:

• Daily, (articles posted during the last 24 hours) – [email protected]
• Weekly Digest cortescurrents – [email protected]