No, Quebec, Logging Intact Forests Is Not a Climate Solution

Quebec has embraced a new kind of climate denial. It’s not denial that climate change is happening—it’s pretty hard to hide from that in Canada where temperatures are rising at a rate twice the global average. It’s denial about the solutions for stopping it and that business as usual has to change. The science is clear that, to avoid catastrophic climate change, we need to halt the further loss of forests. But somehow, with all the science showing the necessity of protecting the lungs of the earth, Quebec has announced that it will be pursing increased logging as a climate solution. In doing so, it’s renouncing science and fueling a dangerous discourse that could have global ramifications.

This week, just days after 500,000 people marched in Montreal demanding climate action, forestry minister Pierre Dufour touted the fact that cutting more trees would be a solution for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, he said, Quebec would be increasing the amount of harvested wood, opening up more forest to logging, and increasing government incentives—in the name of climate change. If that sounds counterintuitive, you’re right to be skeptical. The narrative that logging can be a climate solution is not a new one, especially in Canada, where industry clearcuts over a million acres of boreal forest every year. It’s spin that the logging industry in Canada has been building over many years to ensure that, even if the world became serious about tackling climate change, logging doesn't become a target. The argument is twofold: First, that younger forests are better at absorbing carbon from the atmosphere. Second, that all the products from logging, called harvested wood products (HWPs), will continue to store carbon for years to come.

On the first argument, the science shows that older trees continue to store more carbon as they age. And in the boreal, it’s not just about the trees since over 90 percent of the forest’s carbon is locked up in the soils rather than the vegetation. When the forest is logged, this carbon is then released into the atmosphere. Given that the Canadian boreal stores nearly twice as much carbon as the world’s combined oil reserves, the ramifications of releasing this carbon are severe. In addition, in the boreal, trees take years to regrow. It can take up to 60 years for a forest to sequester enough carbon to make up for all the carbon that was emitted when it was initially logged—blowing past the time the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has said the world has to stop disastrous temperature rise. And that estimate is conservative, assuming that the forest will return the way it was before. Studies are increasingly showing that it does not.

On HWPs, it’s true that there is some carbon trapped away in that Ikea bookshelf in your living room. But it’s only a fraction of the carbon lost between its life in a forest and that in your home. In fact, between the biomass left on the forest floor and the carbon lost during manufacturing, it only retains about 30 percent of the carbon it originally had. And this is under a best-case scenario when a tree becomes something a little more permanent like a wooden bookshelf. Even in those circumstances, studies have shown that wood might not be better for the climate than concrete. But boreal trees don’t just become bookshelves. They also become throwaway products like toilet paper, paper towels, and newsprint. These are then sent to the landfill or septic facility, where they quickly lose any carbon they still had.

Quebec’s announcement comes on the heels of the United Nations Climate Action Summit, where world leaders gathered last week to discuss how to increase their ambition under the 2015 Paris Agreement to avoid catastrophic climate change. At the Global Climate Action Summit last year in San Francisco, forests were called the “forgotten solution” to climate change. But this year, growing alarm about forests fires in Brazil and Alaska and new revelations about the state of the world’s forests hung over the discussions like the thick smoke over the Amazonian canopy. Greta Thunberg took to social media to urge the adoption of nature-based solutions. The need to protect our forests is clear.

The logging industry is peddling a self-serving, unsupported pseudo-science, and the Quebec government should be smarter than to buy into it. And none of Quebec's discussion of carbon accounts for the fact that intact forests are better at resisting climate change, the tremendous loss of biodiversity that comes from logging a forest, or the toll logging takes on the ways of life of Indigenous Peoples. As we face dual climate and biodiversity crises, the science is abundantly clear: we need to protect the intact forests we have left. Logging intact forests is not a solution for anything other than industry.