Color-coding carbon emissions

Quick question: what are the top causes of climate change?

Chances are you thought of one way or another in which fossil fuels are burned. When most people think of climate change, they picture giant smokestacks, belching exhaust pipes, clogged freeways and such.

Fair enough. We clearly need to break our addiction to dirty energy to stabilize our climate. But we can't forget that forests play a critical role as well. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that, on average, about 20-25% of annual greenhouse gas emissions come from deforestation and other land disturbances.

Think of it as brown carbon and green carbon. What can "brown" do for you? Brown carbon, of course, is all the coal, oil, and gas that's burned in our power plants, factories, and automobiles, imperiling our health and way of life. Green carbon, on the other hand, is what is stored in our forests and soils, helping to moderate the effects of climate change. We need less of the former and more of the latter.

One of the planet's largest storehouses of carbon can be found in the boreal forests of Canada. According to the International Boreal Conservation Campaign:

Canada's Boreal Forest stores an estimated 186 billion tons of carbon in its widespread forest and peat ecosystems--the equivalent of 27 years worth of global carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

Sadly, although the province of Ontario has pledged to protect at least 50% of its boreal forests - a standard since matched by Quebec- much of the remaining forest remains under threat from logging, mining, and oil and gas.

Dr. Andrew Weaver, a professor at the University of Victoria and lead author for the IPCC, writes that preventing such industrial disturbance in boreal forests is one of our most effective tools in curbing climate change. In an op-ed in the Victoria Times-Colonist, he writes:

Scientists worldwide recognize that Canada's boreal forest is one of the largest, most intact old-growth forests left on Earth. Rivalling the Amazon rainforest in size and ecological value, the boreal forest provides globally important, irreplaceable ecosystem services.

These include tremendous carbon sequestration and storage capacity, vast reserves of fresh water, the world's most extensive wetlands, and habitat for enormous, healthy populations of wildlife, including migratory waterfowl, songbirds and caribou.

And says we must act:

Canada's boreal forest plays a unique role in the global carbon equation. Stretching across our north, our boreal forest stores more carbon per hectare than any other ecosystem on Earth making it the world's largest terrestrial carbon storehouse.

The more we disturb our boreal forest with increased industrial activity, the more stored carbon is released. To mitigate global warming we should be finding ways to decrease carbon released from industrial disturbance

Let's hope we can see the forests for our climate. For more information and maps, check out the International Boreal Conservation Campaign, support the rights of native communities to refuse industrial degradation on their lands, and also check out the great campaigns by ForestEthics, Greenpeace, and others.