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It’s a good thing trees are made of wood…...or more precisely, it’s a good thing they’re made of carbon, because at a time when we’re all supposed to be worried about carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases and climate change, that allows the forestry industry to present itself a knight in shining armour. And of course there a great deal of truth there, forestry does have a huge role to play creating new woodlands as carbon sinks, supplying woodfuel to substitute for fossil fuels and construction materials to replace concrete, and providing a network of habitats through which much of the rest of our biodiversity can migrate.
But the downside of all this carbon virtue is a tendency to smugness: after all, given our massively negative "net emissions", forestry is surely on the side of the angels, and all must be rosy in the garden? Well yes…except that’s not the whole story, because forestry, like most of the rest of our economy, has evolved to be heavily dependent on oil, and that could be a big problem, not only for the industry’s carbon footprint, but for its economics, because we can be pretty sure that in the long term the combination of government fiscal measures to reduce emissions and the effects of peak oil will only push the price of diesel in one direction.
Downstream, the timber processors can (if they haven’t already) replace fossil fuels with renewably-generated electricity, but there are very few options available for the mechanised harvesters and forwarders that cut and extract the timber to roadside, and the timber lorries that transport that wood to the mills, and that leaves the economics of the standard model of forestry in a very vulnerable position.
A major report on Forestry and Climate Change* was launched today and whilst it attempts, briefly, to quantify the emissions from mechanised operations, it skips over timber transport almost completely, and offers no serious suggestions for emissions reductions for either. At the very least, there needs to be some scenario planning: what happens to our forest industries if rising demand from the eventual economic recovery drives crude oil back over $150 a barrel? Or what happens if someone in government finally realises that subsidising red diesel to the tune of £200 million a year might not be the most intelligent way of combatting climate change?
The obvious, common-sense, response is to restructure forestry to be much more efficient in its use of oil, reducing timber miles, adding value locally, using much more low grade timber locally as firewood rather than shipping it halfway across Scotland. These are changes which have been widely promoted on environmental and social grounds by many of us for years: there has been widespread support for the principle, and precious little appetite for action, so there will be a certain irony if this transformation is eventually driven by economic pressures. Forestry undoubtedly has a good story to tell, and a major role to play in adaption and mitigation measures - the sooner it faces up to and addresses its own oil dependency, the sooner it can tell that story and play that role with a clear conscience.
Jon
* "Combatting Climate Change - A Role for UK Forests"
The full report - 242 pages, 7+ MB, can be downloaded from
http://www.tsoshop.co.uk/gempdf/Climate_Change_Main_Report.pdf
Next entry: A Bit Rich?
Previous entry: SRDP: Chaos or Conspiracy?
But focusing on the financial side of forestry is to open a can of worms (as is probably true for most industries!) - the market is full of hidden subsidies and distortions that make mainstream forestry's claims to be 'commercial' ring hollow.
Consider:
- are the real costs of timber transport met by the industry? Or the taxpayer? (if the latter, it's a subsidy)
- do current woodland values truly reflect the productive potential, less costs, of that land? Or are they influenced by the opportunity for the wealthy to use them in various forms as tax shelters, without any obligation to manage them positively? (if the latter, it's a subsidy)
- do ROCs for electricity generation encourage efficient use of wood as fuel? Or do they skew the market in an inappropriate way? (of course ROCs ARE a subsidy - but should something no better than 40% efficient in energy conversion terms be supported by the taxpayer, while biomass-to-heat at 90% efficiency gets no ROC? (yet))
.....and so on.
It is deeply disappointing that a profession that traditionally has looked a couple of (human) generations ahead is not taking this long term view any more - and if foresters can't think long term, why should we expect politicians - in shaping society - to do so either?