Yesterday I attended the symposium "Forests at Risk: Climate Change and the Future of the American West," organized by the non-profit For the Forest in Aspen, Colorado.
The educational symposium included distinguished scientists from around the United States and Canada to explore the critical connection between forest health and climate change. Al Gore, former vice president to the United States, was the keynote speaker and concluded the symposium with a call to action. "There is one choice in life we face over and over again -- the hard right or the easy wrong."
Al Gore, Former Vice President of the United States
Action on climate change is hard. There is nothing easy about it. Not only do we have to replace light-bulbs and strive to eat local, but we must change entire laws and policies.
We tend to act on climate change when it effects our backyard. In Colorado, 100,000 trees are lost each day to the bark beetle epidemic and we now know that climate change is a major factor. Colder winters traditionally killed the beetle, but now the beetle is sweeping across the region. Since 1997, the Bark Beetle has destroyed 41 million acres in the west.
One solution to climate change is putting a price on carbon. Putting a price on carbon will send signals to the market that will trigger an entire new energy system. While we sit back and debate whether to tax carbon or develop a clean energy standard, many countries around the world like China, Spain, and Germany are acting right now. What is more radical? Doubling the size of carbon dioxide in the atmospher over the next few years or enacting conservative tools to reduce it?
If you focus on a clean energy policy, it is possible to achieve emissions reductions. For example, the State of Colorado has a 30% renewable energy standard. As a nation, this is very achievable, but it will take political will. Even in the worse recession, Governor Ritter proved that Colorado could create jobs in a clean energy economy.
Former Governor Ritter of Colorado
Al Gore made it clear that not only is climate change an economic, national security, and environmental issue, but a moral issue. If we want to leave a healthy and livable earth to our children, then climate change becomes a moral issue. In addition, our ability to adapt to climate change is very much a function of the wealth and standard of living around the rest of the world. Letting nature just work it out is a possibility, but millions of people around the world will pay the price. In the past year, we have seen flooding disasters in Pakistan and massive forest fires in Russia. I am personally very uncomfortable with just letting nature take its course. Human life will suffer.
As Linda Joyce, a Quantitative Ecologist for the U.S. Forest Service stated most eloquently, "Rather than thinking about climate change as a problem, may we envision this as a puzzle." We each have a piece of this puzzle to solve. Lets figure it out.
Many so called environmentalist refuse to see their own culpability in the beetle infestations that are now decimating western forests. The real reason the beetle infestation has gotten out of hand is that healthy forests require forest fires, which naturally occur about once per decade.
Yet, the USFS maintained a policy of complete fire suppression for many decades.
A healthy forest will experience a lightening induced fire about once per decade. The fuel load on the ground is managed by these fires and nutrients are returned to the earth for the healthy tree growth. When the forest floor fuel load is managed by these naturally occurring fires, the fire will rarely move to the higher tree canopy area.
The conflagration fires of the last decade or so have been directly attributed to the decades of fuel built up and used as a "ladder" for the fire to climb to the canopy and then consume the entire forest.
Regularly occurring natural fires will manage the bark beetle by killing weak and diseased host trees, thereby limiting the beetles ability to infest and ravage neighboring trees in the arboreal community.
Many Native American tribes managed their forests with planned fires. So, you can call the beetle infestations the white man's plague in the forest. The USFS has been more concerned with how many board feet of lumber are in the forest, then whether the forest is healthy.
And I've got to move to one of these places that keep getting mild winters, where I live we've had 3 straight winters that have been WAY colder than normal.
Light Bulbs don't give out any CO2 gas - power plants might not either, and will do so less and less
Where there's a problem, deal with the problem...
Besides, the overall US energy savings are less than 1% from a ban,
as from US Dept of Energy own figures,
excluding lighting usage that is not actually incandescent anyway etc
http://ceolas.net/#li171x
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Aspen symposium: Grim outlook for forests because of bugs, disease 2.19.11
http://www.aspentimes.com/article/20110219/NEWS/110219812/
Here is a clue -- truth matters. Don't everstate your case.