The Recorder - Questions 'climate smart' practices - The Recorder
The Recorder - Questions ‘climate smart’ practices
Published: 7/13/2023 9:39:39 PM
Robert Perschel’s recent response to my op-ed (“Half a loaf in the climate crisis? Healey initiative hurts forests,” Recorder, July 5) requires a response.
Readers may recall I referenced mass timber in my op-ed as an industry that “must go the way of coal mining.” I wrote that because returning to the past and building more multi-story buildings out of highly flammable wood will only increase the pressure to log more of our public forests but also produce a firefighter’s nightmare of increased deadly conflagrations. Perschel refers to non-flammable steel and concrete as carbon-intensive in his effort to promote mass timber, overlooking advancements in both those industries to greatly reduce their carbon footprint [“Climate smart practices must follow the science,” Recorder, July 10].
Sadly, the Healey administration also appears to have embraced a resurgence of the wood products industry that will result in more logging of natural carbon capturing trees, some of the few defenses nature offers to push back against climate chaos. That’s not “climate smart,” that’s business-as-usual in the midst of a climate crisis.
Don Ogden, The Enviro Show
Florence
Related Knowledge Center: Climate economics
Climate change is now a driver of the world’s economy. The impact is profound:
- Catastrophic weather events — hurricanes, floods, droughts, high temperatures — are more frequent and more extreme. The cost can be measured in both the initial damage caused and the longer-term impact on the economy.
- Vulnerable communities are increasing climate-related investments, hardening infrastructure and taking other protective measures.
- Investment in carbon capture and storage technologies is increasingly rapidly.
- Governments are making investments and crafting regulations to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
On top of all of this is the cost of uncertainty. As the Fourth National Climate Assessment, released in 2018 by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, says, “The assumption that current and future climate conditions will resemble the recent past is no longer valid.”