Q.-and-A.: Woody Biomass, Pros and Cons

June 22, 2010, 3:43 pm

By TOM ZELLER JR.

As I wrote in an article over the weekend, electricity derived from burning organic matter, particularly wood, has long enjoyed a reputation as a green alternative to coal-fired power — and why not? Trees and plants, renewable by definition, release planet-warming gases into the atmosphere when they burn, and absorb it again when they are growing.

It’s sustainable and climate-friendly to boot — or so the logic has long held.


Associated Press
A pellet made with wood waste and a bit of binder.

As with biofuels and questions surrounding their impact on land use around the world, however, the science on biomass is proving a bit more nuanced.

The Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences in Massachusetts recently completed an analysis of the potential impact of using wood for energy in that state, where a handful of new biomass plants are in the development pipeline. The study was commissioned by the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources, and its findings — broadly oversimplified by some of the news media, the center has said — are likely to have implications in other states contemplating their own expansion of woody biomass power.

I sent some questions to John M. Hagan, the president of the Manomet Center, and Thomas Walker, the study’s team leader. The queries and responses are below.

Q. Among the headlines that heralded the arrival of the Manomet Center’s biomass study were many like these: “Mass. Study: Wood Power Worse Polluter Than Coal,” “Manomet: Biomass Isn’t Green,” “Biomass Benefits Refuted.” Do they capture the essence of the study?

A. No, all three headlines fail to recognize that over time using wood for energy can lead to lower atmospheric greenhouse gas levels. While emissions from burning wood are initially higher than from fossil fuels, regrowing forests sequesters carbon, a process that eventually can yield greenhouse gas levels lower than would have resulted from continued burning of fossil fuels.

The key issue, and the focus of the Manomet study, is the timing and magnitude of these effects. Energy and environmental policymakers will need to carefully weigh these short- and long-term trade-offs of biomass energy development. All the headlines miss the details and therefore serve to misinform rather than inform the public. It’s unfortunate that the story can’t be reduced to simple sound bites, but these types of life cycle analyses inevitably are complicated.

To further complicate the story, while our life cycle analysis looked at greenhouse gas emissions from production and transport of both biomass and fossil fuels, we couldn’t evaluate every possible environmental impact of energy production, such as broken blowout preventers 5,000 feet under water or mountaintop removals to access coal. Rarely (maybe never) does society really weigh the full array of costs and benefits of our decisions. But as the world gets more complicated, and as resources get more scarce, and as the human population climbs to nine billion (and then some), we’re going to have to become more serious about analyzing these kinds of trade-offs.

Q. To what extent do the study’s findings have wider implications for biomass power generation in other parts of the country?

A. The framework we developed for carbon accounting could be used for an individual power facility, a state, a country, or even the European Union (which is importing wood chips from the U.S. and other countries to meet its renewable-energy goals). In order to assess the greenhouse gas implications of using wood for energy, you have to know four things:

• The life cycle of the wood (e.g., logging debris, whole trees, trees vulnerable to catastrophic events) in the absence of the biomass energy opportunity.
• The type of energy that will be generated (heat, electricity, combined heat and electricity), because different types have different efficiencies and thus different CO2 emissions profiles.
• The type of fossil fuel being displaced (coal, oil, or natural gas), because different fuels have different emissions profiles.
• The management of the forest — management can either slow or accelerate forest growth, and therefore recovery of carbon from the atmosphere.

We plugged in data for Massachusetts to get an answer for the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources. But you could plug in data from anywhere and get an answer for that place, and that’s what you need to do in order to get the right answer for the greenhouse gas footprint. The European Union might benefit from applying our framework to find out exactly what the benefits (or costs) might be to the atmosphere of using wood to achieve its 20 percent renewable-energy goal by 2020. Without doing this analysis, the E.U. could conceivably be making the climate worse in the near term (10 to 30 years), and this might not be smart climate policy.

Q. Some critics — including the biomass industry — have said the study failed to make clear the benefits of using forest and agricultural residues for biomass power generation, as opposed to growing crops and forests specifically for energy generation. Is this a fair charge?

A. Actually, the report was painstakingly transparent with respect to what we analyzed and what we didn’t. In the case of greenhouse gas emissions, the study addressed only the carbon cycle implications of biomass harvested from actively managed, natural forests. In the third paragraph of the report’s executive summary, we clearly made this point:

We do not consider nonforest sources of wood biomass (e.g., tree care and landscaping, mill residues, construction debris), which are potentially available in significant quantities but which have very different greenhouse gas implications.

These materials can be important potential sources of biomass — ones that likely have very different carbon cycle implications than biomass from natural forests — and merit careful and separate consideration in biomass policy development. Our carbon accounting framework would capture these differences.

Q. Some biomass opponents say that if the benefits of biomass power are limited and/or marginal, society shouldn’t waste time or money investing in it, channeling money instead toward further development of solar, wind and other nonpolluting sources. Do you see a role for biomass power in the nation’s overall energy portfolio?

A.This is really an issue for policymakers at the state and national levels. But our study suggests that it’s important to be specific about how you define biomass. Energy generation from harvests of live whole trees from natural forests has different life cycle implications than energy generation from wood wastes that otherwise would have released their carbon to the atmosphere relatively quickly. The choice of biomass energy generation technologies also matters. Biomass fueling thermal and combined heat and power systems typically produce greenhouse gas benefits sooner than large-scale biomass electricity generation.

Finally, we’d emphasize that there are many other considerations besides greenhouse gas emissions when making energy policy — these include energy security, air quality, forest recreation values, local economics, other environmental impacts of extracting fossil fuels (and not just greenhouse gas emissions of burning fossil fuels), and quality of place, among others. Policymakers need to weigh all these factors in making energy policy.

What we’ve done is put a much sharper point on one piece of the story — greenhouse gas emissions. Until our study came out, it was widely assumed that using wood for energy was immediately carbon- neutral. How this new insight factors into the public’s view of using wood for energy remains to be seen.

As for Manomet, our role is to inform society with science, with the hope that a better informed society will make better decisions.

Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company
NYTimes.com 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018
  

Pinchot Institute for Conservation Woody Biomass Reports

http://www.pinchot.org/bioenergy
 

Net Benefits of Biomass Power Under Scrutiny

By TOM ZELLER Jr.
New York Times
Published: June 18, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/19/science/earth/19biomass.html?pagewanted=1&ref=earth


GREENFIELD, Mass. — Matthew Wolfe, an energy developer with plans to turn tree branches and other woody debris into electric power, sees himself as a positive force in the effort to wean his state off of planet-warming fossil fuels.

“It’s way better than coal,” Mr. Wolfe said, “if  you look at it over its life cycle.”

Not everyone agrees, as evidenced by lawn signs in this northwestern Massachusetts town reading  “Biomass? No Thanks.”

In fact, power generated by burning wood, plants and other organic material, which makes up  50 percent of all renewable energy produced in the United States, according to federal statistics, is facing increased scrutiny and opposition.

That, critics say, is because it is  not as climate-friendly as once thought, and the pollution it causes in the short run may outweigh its long-term benefits.

The opposition to biomass power threatens its viability as a renewable energy source  when the country is looking to diversify its energy portfolio, urged on by President Obama in an address to the nation Tuesday. It also underscores the difficult and complex choices state and local governments face in
pursuing clean-energy goals.

Biomass proponents say it is a simple and proved renewable technology based on natural cycles. They acknowledge that burning wood and other
organic matter releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere just as coal does, but point out that trees and plants also absorb the gas. If done carefully, and without overharvesting, they say, the damage to the climate  can be offset.

But opponents say achieving that sort of balance is almost impossible, and  carbon-absorbing forests will ultimately be destroyed to feed a voracious biomass industry fueled inappropriately by clean-energy subsidies. They also argue that, like any incinerating  operation, biomass plants generate all sorts of other pollution, including particulate matter. State and federal regulators are now puzzling over these arguments.

Last month, in outlining its plans to regulate greenhouse gases,  the Environmental Protection Agency declined to exempt emissions from “biogenic” sources like biomass power plants. That dismayed the biomass and forest products industries, which typically describe biomass as  “carbon neutral.” The agency said more deliberation was needed.

Meanwhile, plans for several biomass plants around the country have been dropped because of stiff community opposition.
In March, a $250 million biomass power project planned for Gretna, Fla., was abandoned after  residents complained that it threatened air quality. Two planned plants in Indiana have faced similar grass-roots opposition.

In April, an association of family physicians in North Carolina told state regulators that biomass power plants there, like other plants and factories that pollute the air, could “increase the risk of premature death, asthma, chronic bronchitis and heart disease.”

In Massachusetts, fierce opposition to a handful of projects in the western part of the state, including Mr. Wolfe’s, prompted officials to order a moratorium  on new permits last December, and to commission a scientific review of  the environmental  credentials  of biomass power.

That study, released last week, concluded that, at least in Massachusetts,  power plants using woody material as fuel would probably prove worse for the climate than existing coal plants over the next several decades. Plants that generate both heat and power, displacing not just coal but also oil and gas, could yield  dividends faster, the report said. But in every case, the study found, much depends on what is burned, how it is burned, how forests are managed and how the industry is regulated.

Ian A. Bowles, the secretary of  the Massachusetts Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs,  said that biomass power and sustainable forest
management were not mutually exclusive. But he also said that the logical conclusion from the study was that biomass plants that generated electricity alone probably should not be eligible for incentives for renewable energy.

“That would represent a significant change in policy,” Mr. Bowles said.

The biomass industry argues that studies like the one in Massachusetts do not make a clear distinction between wood harvested specifically for
energy production and the more common, and desirable, practice of burning wood and plant scraps left from  agriculture and logging operations.
The Biomass Power Association, a trade group based in Maine, said in a statement last week that it was “not aware of any facilities that use
whole trees for energy.”

During a recent visit to an old gravel pit outside of town where he hopes to build his 47-megawatt Pioneer Renewable Energy project, Mr. Wolfe said the plant would be capable of generating heat and power, and would use only woody residues as a feedstock. “It’s really frustrating,” he said. “There’s a tremendous deficit of trust that is really inhibiting things.”

In the United States, biomass power plants burn a variety of feedstocks, including   rice hulls in Louisiana and  sugar cane residues, called bagasse, in parts of Florida and Hawaii. A vast majority, though, some 90 percent, use woody residue as a feedstock, according to the Biomass Power Association.  About 75 percent of biomass electricity comes from the paper and pulp companies, which collect their residues and burn them to generate power for themselves.

But more than 80 operations in 20 states are  grid-connected and generate power for sale to local utilities and distribution to residential and commercial customers, a $1 billion industry, according to the  association. The increasing availability of subsidies and tax incentives has put dozens of new projects in the development pipeline.

The problem with all this biomass, critics argue, is that wood can actually churn out more greenhouse gases than coal. New trees might well cancel that out, but they do not grow overnight. That means the low-carbon attributes of biomass are often realized too slowly  to be particularly useful for combating climate change.

Supporters of the technology say those limitations can be overcome with tight regulation of  what materials are burned and how they are harvested. “The key question is the rate of use,” said Ben Larson of the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental group based in Cambridge, Mass.,   that supports the sensible use of biomass power.  “We need to consider which sources are used, and how the land is taken care of over the long haul.”

But critics maintain that “sustainable” biomass power is an oxymoron, and that  nowhere near enough residual material exists to feed a large-scale industry.  Plant owners, they say, will inevitably be forced to seek out less beneficial fuels, including whole trees harvested from tracts of land that never would have been logged otherwise.  Those trees, critics say, would do far more to absorb planet-warming gases if they were simply let alone.

“The fact is, you might get six or seven megawatts of power from residues in Massachusetts,” said Chris Matera, the founder of Massachusetts Forest Watch. “They’re planning on building about 200 megawatts. So it’s a red herring. It’s not about burning waste wood.
This is about burning trees.”

Whether or not that is true, biomass power is also coming under attack simply for the ordinary air pollution it produces. Web sites like No Biomass Burn,  based in the Pacific Northwest, liken biomass emissions to cigarette smoke. Duff Badgley, the coordinator of the site, says a proposed plant in  Mason County, Washington,  would “rain toxic pollutants” on residents there. And the American Lung Association has asked Congress to exclude subsidies for biomass  from any new energy bill, citing potentially “severe impacts” on health.

Nathaniel Greene, the director of renewable energy policy for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said that while such concerns were not unfounded, air pollution could be controlled. “It involves technology that we’re really good at,” Mr. Greene said. For opponents like Mr. Matera, the tradeoffs are not  worth it.

“We’ve got huge problems,” Mr. Matera said. “And there’s no easy answer. But biomass doesn’t do it. It’s a false solution that has enormous
impacts.”

Mr. Wolfe says that is shortsighted. Wind power and solar power are not ready to scale up technologically and economically, he said, particularly in this corner of Massachusetts. Biomass, by contrast, is proven and available, and while it is far from perfect, he argued, it can play a small part in reducing reliance on fossil fuels.

“Is it carbon-neutral? Is it low-carbon? There’s some variety of opinion,” Mr. Wolfe said. “But that’s missing the forest for the trees.

The question I ask is, What’s the alternative?”
 

Biomass Benefits Questioned

Bangor Daily News
Editorial
6/17/10
Bangor, Maine

Two very different views of biomass were presented to the public last week. On one hand, Maine’s senators cited looming regulations on biomass burning as the reason for their support of an unsuccessful resolution to strip the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of its authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. The same day, the state of Massachusetts issued a report that found that burning biomass to create electricity was no better, in terms of emissions, than using fossil fuels.

These conflicting positions show that calculating the “greenness” of biomass is a complicated task, which neither the EPA nor the biomass industry has finished.

Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe blasted the EPA for a recent finding that burning biomass is not carbon-neutral. Such a finding, the senators said, would result in job losses at more than a dozen facilities that burn biomass, either to produce electricity for sale or use in their facilities.

Scientifically, of course, the EPA is right. When wood is burned, carbon is released into the atmosphere. This is only part of the picture, however.

If the wood debris — usually tops and branches — were left in the forest, it would emit carbon dioxide and methane as it decomposed. Second, trees, which absorb carbon dioxide, grow back much more quickly than decomposing organisms turn into oil. So, the carbon payback period is much shorter for biomass than it is for fossil fuels.

Rather than arguing with the fact that burning biomass emits carbon, regulators and lawmakers must find an appropriate way to offset biomass carbon emissions with the payback period. This is especially important if, as the president has pushed for, Congress passes legislation that puts a price on carbon emissions. Clearly carbon emissions from biomass-fueled plants shouldn’t be treated the same as those from coal- or oil-fired plants. At the same time, however, biomass shouldn’t be given a pass.

According to the report, burning biomass rather than oil to produce heat will result in carbon emissions savings in as little as five years. Using the wood debris rather than fossil fuels to produce electricity could result in increased emissions, it found.

The study was done by the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences for the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources as part of the department’s assessment of the state’s renewable portfolio standards, which are aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Concerns were also raised that incentives aimed at biomass energy could cause an increase in tree harvesting, which would also increase carbon emissions.

This can be remedied by ensuring such incentives apply only to wood waste, which is currently the case.

The report does not mean that further investments in biomass aren’t warranted, but rather that further study is needed to better quantify the environmental, economic and security (biomass is homegrown; oil increasingly is not) benefits of using wood debris for fuel.
 

Bark beetles: Forest Service says more dead trees falling

By The Associated Press

Friday, June 18, 2010 12:46 PM MDT

CHEYENNE — Strong wind, recent rain, melting snow and a beetle infestation have become a dangerous combination in the forests of Colorado and Wyoming.

Don’t camp, park or otherwise linger beneath any of the millions of trees killed by bark beetles in recent years, warns the U.S. Forest Service.

The roots of the dead trees have been rotting. Combined with muddy ground and strong wind, that’s bringing down large numbers of trees onto roads, trails and campsites, said Forest Service spokeswoman Mary Ann Chambers.

“You’re looking at a really dangerous situation out there right now,” Chambers said Wednesday. “People really need to be careful.”

A National Weather Service forecast called for gusts up to 80 mph Thursday across southern Wyoming and the Colorado Front Range. A high wind warning was posted for southeastern Wyoming.

Beetles have killed 3.6 million acres of pine trees in Colorado and southern Wyoming, enough dead trees to cover the state of Connecticut. Forest officials estimate that even before the muddy conditions this spring, 100,000 trees a day were falling down in the region.

The rate lately has been even higher, said Cal Wettstein, Rocky Mountain incident commander for the bark beetle epidemic.

“It’s way more than that,” he said. “It will come in bursts, so to speak.”

Even a falling tree that doesn’t hit you can be a problem.

About 3,700 miles of roads and almost 900 miles of trails need work to remove hazardous trees, Rick Cables, regional head of the U.S. Forest Service, said last week.

About 550 miles of power lines are at risk from falling trees.

A Forest Service press release suggested parking close to main roads and taking a chain saw or ax in case trees block your route.

If winds pick up, move into a clearing. And if you encounter trouble, don’t rely on your cell phone: Many areas in the forests don’t have coverage.

Most campgrounds in the forests have remained open despite the falling trees. Many were cleared of beetle-killed timber previously, although work will continue at several campgrounds this summer.

Forest employees in the backcountry have been leaving notes at tents pitched beneath dead trees, Wettstein said, suggesting that campers move to a safer spot. “It’s getting quite hazardous out there,” he said.

Copyright © 2010

American chestnuts: There are a few left standing

Published: Thursday, June 17, 2010, 9:10 AM     Updated: Thursday, June 17, 2010, 9:18 AM

STATEN ISLAND, NY - CHARLESTON - Over 100 years ago, Arthur Hollick presented a paper titled "The Chestnut Disease on Staten Island" to the Natural Science Association of Staten Island, a forerunner of the Staten Island Museum.

"No remedy has yet been found, and the nature of the disease and the method of its propagation and growth make this an exceedingly difficult problem. Unless it very soon ceases itself, as other epidemics often do, the chestnut in this vicinity at least will soon be extinct," wrote Hollick in 1908.

Hollick was right. No antidote for the virulent blight was found, and the American chestnut tree (casterrea dentata) became extinct - nearly. The blight that began with the introduction of an Asian chestnut species in 1905 ravaged the population of some 4 billion trees in the Eastern United States.

Even the memory of its silhouette on the landscape, its distinctive scent and savory nuts has nearly vanished.

But the tree itself is not extinct. It does not grow to its former majesty, but its valiant persistence and its central role in natural and social history has galvanized the American Chestnut Foundation to try to establish a blight resistant species.

Growing to 100-feet with a trunk four feet in diameter, the massive hardwood, was the most ubiquitous tree in the East, accounting for 25 percent of the hardwoods. It grew from southern Maine south through the Appalachians to Mississippi and west to Michigan.

It was said that a squirrel could travel across the chestnut's treetops from Maine to Georgia and never touch the ground.

Its fruit, produced in legendary abundance every year, was valued by all creatures - human, four-legged and winged. In Appalachia, it supported subsistence living and became a cash crop when the railroad came in to transport it.

The aroma of roasting chestnuts in winter on city streets is still familiar, but, these days, they are mostly imported and from another species of chestnut.

Valued for its strength and rot resistance, the timber was used in a wide range of construction projects - from railroad ties to fencing - and its warm and grainy hues were prized by woodworkers.

Billions of trees dying in less than 50 years, made mass amounts of lumber available. Local homeowners, who know that the beautiful woodwork in their home is due to the chestnut blight, may be surprised to learn the tree has not vanished.

STILL AROUND 

Island naturalist Ray Matarazzo said the tree can be found in most areas of Staten Island, including the Greenbelt, Evergreen Park in Great Kills, Long Pond in Richmond Valley, Mount Loretto in Pleasant Plains and Magnolia Swamp Park in Bloomfield.

The tree's long, pointy, oval leaves with serrated edges and distinct veins are a prominent feature, and at this time of the year, they are flowering.

On an overcast day, Matarazzo met me at Clay Pit Ponds State Park Preserve in Charleston to go look at the best chestnut specimen he knew of.

With the reminder that the area was preserved because of the rare and, in some cases, endangered flora and fauna that can be found there, he pointed out a number of examples such as black jack oak, sweet bay magnolia, possum haw, and pitch pine.

The chestnut tree survives in two forms, but neither are impervious to the blight and neither ever reaches the regal height and breadth of the historic tree.

The survival instinct is most vivid in the shoots sent up from the stump of a tree that succumbed to the blight. The first tree that Matarazzo showed me was this type. A shrubby understory, it is determined but doomed.

The other one was fully grown, some 22 feet tall and 9 inches in diameter. Up until recently, Matarazzo said if you didn't know better you would think, here is a healthy chestnut tree. And although some get a little taller, they all eventually succumb to the fungal disease that gets under the bark. This tree, which started showing signs two years ago, has two full blown areas where the blistering blight has girdled it, cutting off the flow of water and nutrients..

"Two feet off the ground, where it's swollen, and again here (a few more feet up), that's the blight. That's why the tree won't live much longer. What a shame," said Matarazzo.

The tree was full of catkins, the male flower, that were not yet fully bloomed. The female flower will sprout later. The tree does not self pollinate, however, so without the pollen of another tree, the chestnuts will be infertile - unable to sprout another tree.

But the catkins were plentiful, like Fourth of July sparklers. Matarazzo speculated that it could be a last hurrah that trees are known to produce before their demise.

On the ground, were a couple of spiky burrs in which the nuts grow.

"You can't imagine the amount of nuts produced and the wildlife that depended on them. For the Lenape (Indians) collecting nuts was part of their diet. They ate them and pounded them into flour to make cakes and bread," said Matarazzo.

Museum collection reflects species demise 

Retired as the assistant curator of science with the Staten Island Museum, Ray Matarazzo was well acquainted with the work of Arthur Hollick, one of a number of 19th and early 20th century naturalists that included William T. Davis, Nathaniel Britton and Charles Leng. They sought to preserve the natural history of the Island by collecting and preserving anything that grew. Their collections of plants and insects formed the basis of the Staten Island Museum collection.

It was the golden age of collecting, said Ed Johnson, curator of science at the museum. There was a big push to catalogue everything in the natural world, give it a name and figure it all out. They walked everywhere, leaving early in the morning and coming back at night. Davis, for example, would walk from St. George to Tottenville.

In the museum's herbarium, a collection of 25,000 plant specimens dating back to the 1860s, are specimens of the American chestnut tree, collected even before the blight started. Attached with linen tape and pressed on special paper, the color drained over time, one has the disconcerting perspective of life imitating art. They appear to be sepia-toned photographs.

The labels become more ominous as time progresses. On an August 31, 1913 specimen Davis wrote on the label, "Casterrea dentata - all others dead or nearly so."

© 2010 SILive.com. All rights reserved.
 

Proposed timber harvest provokes mailings

Following are both sides of a postcard sent to sawmills in western North Carolina regarding a proposed timber harvest near Blowing Rock, NC. Click on the image to enlarge and judge for yourself what the message is.

The changing face of the environmental movement

May 29, 2010

By Stephen Murgatroyd
Columnist
Troy Mediahttp://www.troymedia.com/

EDMONTON, AB, May 29, 2010/ Troy Media/ – What a difference a year makes. This time last year the environmental movement was gearing up for a major breakthrough at the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit. With a combination of “doom and gloom” soothsayers – Ban ki Moon, Al Gore, Prince Charles, James Hansen, David Suzuki – and optimistic negotiators, it was clear that Copenhagen was being positioned as “the last chance” we had to save the planet.

We know what happened during the negotiations, however. Polluters couldn’t agree with the small islands and the developing world and the negotiations fell apart, with a compromise “lets-look-as-if-we-might-save-the-planet” deal being signed off by a few countries at the end of a tough 10 days of negotiation.

Grief therapy

Since then the environmental movement has been going through a period of loss – grieving the loss of an ideal and hoping for a new reality that will culminate in a new global climate change negotiation in Brazil in December. But the game is up. There will not be a meaningful commitment to climate change mitigation involving all of the leading polluters, especially the US, China, India and Canada. What is more, the general public in Canada, the US and Britain are all signalling that climate change is less of a priority for them now than it was five years ago.

Just as the language has gone through significant change – from “global warming” through “climate change,” from “climate catastrophe” to the “climate challenge” – so now the environmental movement is going through its own metamorphoses. According to The Guardian (UK), “the economic case for global action to stop the destruction of the natural world is even more powerful than the argument for tackling climate change, a major report for the United Nations will declare this summer” – a fact reinforced by the psychological, social and economic impacts of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

One reason for this shift is money. Groups such as Conservation International (CI) and the Nature Conservancy (TNC) are among the most trusted environmental “brands” in the world, pledged to protect and defend nature. Yet many of the green organisations meant to be leading the fight are busy securing funds from those who are also destroying the environmental through mining and exploration. Sierra Club – the biggest green group in the US – was approached in 2008 by the maker of Clorox bleach, which said that if the club endorsed its new range of “green” household cleaners, they would give it a percentage of the sales. The club’s Corporate Accountability Committee said the deal created a blatant conflict of interest – but took it anyway. Money talks. Right now the money is saying that biodiversity and environmental impacts of pollution, deforestation, land use changes and other matters are more important than climate change.

A second reason is public opinion. The public are disaffected by all the talk about the need for a response to climate change and both the lack of action and the costs of the actions that need to be taken. In the UK, where energy rationing over the next decade is a real possibility due to the now defeated governments dithering on environmental policy, many are now balking at the rising costs of energy and the ugliness of the countryside blighted by wind turbines. In the US, public support for action on climate change is down from 46 per cent of the population to 36 per cent in just one year. Environmental groups no longer enjoy the wide support of the people when they focus on climate change.

A third reason is political reality. Climate change as a policy strategy in the US and Canada is stuck and likely to be so for some time. The US Senate has the Kerry-Lieberman bill to debate, but it is unlikely to pass. Canada has indicated it will follow the US lead to create a single North American strategy, so Canada is also unlikely to do anything until the US passes appropriate legislation.

However, major changes are taking place with respect to conservation, water, land use and air quality on both side of the US-Canada divide and serious attention to conservation and clean-up can be expected on both sides of the border following the BP spill. Environmental groups are already gearing up to lobby on these issues, dusting off old policies and approaches from the early 1990’s. Both the US and Canada are more likely to enact legislation on these issues than on transformative changes required to “stop” climate change.

Climate change problematic

The final reason that the environmental groups are shifting ground is that the science of climate change remains problematic. While some would argue that the core science demonstrating that the climate is changing and that this is due largely to the actions of people remains unchanged, the sceptics have gained sufficient ground over the last year to plant large trees of doubt. Worse, data from real world observations (as opposed to data from climate change models) provide opportunities for varying interpretations of the current state of the planet. The science is becoming a tough sell.

For all these reasons, the environmentalists will now focus more and more on environmental degradation and clean-up than on climate change – deforestation, water and land use will be the new focus for their work. Not a bad thing either.
 

Researchers hope hybrids mean return of chestnuts

6/7/10
By Paul Huggins
Staff Writer
Decatur Daily
Decatur, Alabama

The hybrid American chestnuts now being planted in American forests may be strong enough to resist the disease that once devastated the species, but threats still lurk in the woods that make their survival a question.

Research at Bankhead National Forest, however, may provide answers that will ensure the trees’ return as the “mighty giants” of eastern America.

“We found out a couple of things,” said Stacy Clark, Ph.D. researcher for the U.S. Forest Service’s Southern Research Station, who planted 250 chestnut seedlings in Bankhead in March 2007.

Fast but vulnerable

“These trees can grow pretty fast in the field. They’re probably one of the fastest-growing species out there.

“However, they’re extremely susceptible to different things when they’re first planted,” she said. “A lot of them died that first year because they couldn’t withstand the drought. And some of them have had some insect defoliation. And then the deer have nibbled on them.”

About 100 have died so far, Clark said.

Learning about those challenges is why the forest service and The American Chestnut Foundation initiated the Bankhead study and additional studies in three more national forests.

The findings will help prepare a management plan for when the chestnut foundation provides the forest service with thousands of trees to plant each year, Clark said.

A century ago, the American chestnut was one of the most important trees in eastern forests. Wild animals and livestock feasted on the nutritious nuts, which also produced a cash crop for rural Appalachian families.

Chestnuts also were one of the best trees for timber because they grew straight and tall and resisted rot.

But a fungus, accidentally imported from Asian chestnut trees in the early part of the 20th century, spread quickly, killing all major stands by the 1950s. The species that routinely reached 100 feet now grows to little more than a 5-foot shrub before dying from the fungus.

A hybrid chestnut, crossed with an Asian variety, showed it can withstand the fungus under closely managed, nursery conditions. Researches now must learn whether it can survive in the wild.

Clark, who started the Bankhead research while based at Alabama A&M University, said it appears the trees, at least while young, will need ongoing management.

“If you just go out there and plant the trees and walk away, you’re pretty much going to have mass failure,” she said. “So you may have to spray insecticide on them, you may have to cut down natural competitors around them, maybe use herbicide.”

Many of the chestnuts at Bankhead were expected to fail, Clark added, because they were either the pure American variety with no blight resistance or strains of hybrids with mixed levels of blight resistance.

About 1,200 chestnuts planted last year in Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia are more blight-resistant than the Bankhead trees and have received maintenance assistance, such as deer guards. Those trees show a 90 percent survival rate heading into their second year, said Clark, now monitoring chestnut progress from the University of Tennessee.

Providing enough management for restoring chestnuts throughout eastern America will be a tall task, Clark said. There is talk of building a volunteer network to help maintain the chestnut seedlings, but she said she’s not optimistic volunteers will be effective.

“There are a lot of nuances to taking care of trees in the field,” Clark said. “If you have volunteers you’re going to have to do a lot of training. The forest service, in my opinion, is going to have to put some resources into chestnut restoration.”

Despite the challenges ahead, Clark said, she
is optimistic that the chestnut restoration program will prove fruitful one day, but the trees probably won’t be self-sustaining for two more generations of Americans.

“It’s probably going to be in our grandchildren’s lifetime,” she said.