Forests

Saving Our Forests From Destruction

Burning wood is worse than burning coal, in fact, 30-40% more C02 goes into the air, as Chad Hanson, co-founder of the John Muir Project, explains. Yet wood pellets are being labeled as a green solution! Unless we stop turning #forests into #woodpellets and lumber products, and transporting them overseas, we will lose critical drawdown capacity, desperately needed in this decade. Tree plantations which are monocultures, decrease #biodiversity.

Importing live trees also has hazards, as Nick Phillips of the Woodland Trust explains. In the UK, 80% of the native ash trees are dying due to imported diseases, while grazing animals prevent the return of native woodlands. Some farmers are integrating crops and trees, allowing for cooling, which will become more critical as the climate warms.

The biggest trees sequester the most carbon by far. They need to be protected. Non-wood alternatives like hemp (hempcrete) and recycled steel could be used instead for building.

Is the forest fuel or is it habitat? Wood products or living ecosystems? Life on Earth depends on how we answer these questions.

HEMP

#Hemp is an incredibly versatile plant. Peter Miles tells us that we can make paper from fast growing hemp, instead of cutting trees, replace concrete, a major source of greenhouse gases, and make biodegradable plastics and textiles to help solve the serious problem of toxic microfibers and particles in the oceans, which poison the fish, and the people who eat them. Hemp can be eaten and is a good source of protein.
The hemp plant itself can restore depleted and even radioactive soils. Both the plant and the concrete sequester carbon. What’s not to like?

In Zimbabwe, without vested interests interfering, Peter’s company, eHemp.House, aims to help the country develop a decarbonized industrial base with hemp pellet fuel and local biodiesel for farm machinery. He hopes to spread to other African countries where hemp grows readily and can help bolster sustainable and better #lifestyles.

Forests: Mismanaged For Money

“Hazardous Fuel Reduction” is a euphemism for logging. Instead of protecting communities from fire, as the forest service would have us believe, thinning, clear cutting, and snag (dead tree) removal in the deep forest are all practices that damage soils, and increase both the intensity and speed of #wildfires. Making money from such programs as Clear Cuts for Kilowatts, the #ForestService is neither protecting forests, nor the communities that fire endangers. "Non-commercial only". These simple words need to be added to the Build Back Better Bill so that the $14 billion allocated for forests will actually protect them.

As Chad Hanson explains in his book, #Smokescreen, logging by any name and putting out large fires in the wildlands are not effective in preventing such tragedies as the Camp fire. Instead, the focus should be on fireproofing houses and regularly pruning the area surrounding them.
The actual wildland-urban interface is 100 feet, not miles away.

Please write to your Senator and ask that the #BuildBackBetter Bill, HR5376, Section 10011, Points 1 and 2 be amended to contain the words “non-commercial only”, with no exceptions. Although the bill has already passed the House of Representatives, it can still be amended.

An Inconvenient Apocalypse

The dream of endless bounty is over. We must save as much of Nature as is still possible and end the wealth-concentrating system that is destroying it. Wes Jackson, in his no-nonsense fashion, explains how our ecological collapse began with #agriculture, when we started to remove carbon from the soil to grow crops, then from the forests to build ships, and finally from the deep ground to build civilizations.

Now we need to power down as we face irreversible changes - inconvenient, to say the least.

Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen envision a transition - to fewer and less - to life without dense energy, with less destructive systems of agriculture. They chart a collective, realistic path for humanity - not only to survive, but also to emerge on the other side with a renewed appreciation of the larger living world, recognizing that the rediscovery of Nature, and of human connection is the greatest renaissance of all.

Their book, An Inconvenient #Apocalypse, Environmental Collapse, #Climate Crisis and the Fate of Humanity will be published by The University of Notre Dame Press in the fall of 2022 and will be available both in paper and in digital format.

Eco Restoration is Happening!

People in John D. Liu’s #EcoRestoration Camps are bringing back #biodiversity by restoring whole ecosystems on land that had been degraded by agriculture, overgrazing, mining and industry. A former filmmaker, John dreamed of camping on the land and bringing it back to life. It turned out that many people shared this dream and were willing to make it a reality.

There are now over a hundred such camps, and the movement is expanding around the world. Nature's amazing resilence is evident once #HydrologicalCycles return. The sequestration of carbon in healthy soils and plants could significantly stave off #ClimateChange, and give us time to recognize that the purpose of life is not to consume, but to care for each other and our incredible planet.
Hosted by Dale Walkonen and Dr. Sheila Laffey.

You can find out more at https://ecosystemrestorationcamps.org/

The Power of Forest Bathing

Sylvie Rokab and Sheila Laffey, Ph.D., certified Nature therapy guides, describe how the practice of #ForestBathing boosts our immune system. Trees emit volatile organic compounds, #Phytoncides, to protect themselves from insects and germs. When we inhale these VOCs, they induce human natural killer (NK) cell activity to ward off cancer and other diseases. Aside from the retreats available, even a short walk in the woods or a quiet moment of #Mediation in Nature has effects that last for weeks.

Hazardous Smoke Hits North America

As Canadian forests burn out of control, clouds of hazardous smoke shift with the wind, affecting first Northeastern and then Midwestern parts of the United States.

The #AirQuality varies, but the tiny particles that it contains pose serious health risks to the lungs, heart and even the brain.

Climate Change is making the weather unpredictable. Canadian trees, hit by an ice storm in April, lost branches which then provided ready tinder for fire. Drought made it worse. At least 17 million tons of CO2 have been released by the #Wildfires so far.

Paul Beckwith and Patrick Hogan explain why the air quality created by smoke is a serious problem, that is likely to affect more forests as the atmosphere continues to heat. As the smoke hit Washington DC, legislators had a taste of the effects of the climate crisis, something akin to what happened in the 1930s #Dustbowl. As grit came into their chamber, the legislature took action then. But will this event move the dial at all?

Recovering The River, A Tribal Victory

Today's guest, Vanessa Castle, Fish and Wildlife Technician, and member of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, is featured in the Beautiful Undammed episode from the new series, Wild Hope, which will be released on YouTube on August 28th. The entire Wild Hope series will begin streaming on YouTube starting July 31 at www.wildhope.tv.
Vanessa tells the story of how the local people are working with the now freed river to restore the land and the #Salmon, who carry critical marine nutrients into the #Ecosystem so that it can flourish once again.

New Hope for the Amazon?

While the Amazon rainforest is still being attacked by logging, mining, and cattle raising, Atossa Soltani, who has been in the front lines of the fight to save the Amazon, has hope that, with the return of Lula to the Brazilian presidency, deforestation will be sharply curtailed and hydrological cycles which she describes in detail, can be restored. Lula's inclusion of indigenous leaders in his government is a powerful step toward much needed equity and protection of human rights.

Buoyed by the EU’s decision to ban the import of all goods, including timber and animal products, that come from rainforest destruction, the countries of the Amazon region are uniting to reverse years of devastation that have threatened this critical habitat and carbon sink.

Atossa shares the short animated film, Amazonia 2041: A Vision for the Future.

Atossa Soltani is the Global Strategy Director for the Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative and founder of Amazon Watch.

Hosted by Sheila Laffey, Ph.D.

The Critical Balance: Land Use and Food Systems

To preserve the fabric of #Biodiversity, critical changes in how we manage and interact with complex land based systems are needed if we are to avoid triggering more climate tipping points.

Better food systems are needed to take into account the wide range of complex interactions that affect the biosphere. We must work with nature, rather than against it.

The Amazon region, a vital component of the living Earth system, is in danger of becoming savannah and has largely lost its ability to sequester carbon due to logging and agriculture, principally cattle raising, which damages the ecosystem.

The preservation of peatlands requires a delicate hydrological balance. If too wet, methane is emitted, but if drained, peat emits carbon dioxide. #Permafrost melt is a threat to these fragile ecosystems.

Recorded November 16, 2024 at COP 29 in Baku, Azerbaijan

Hosted by #NickBreeze , Journalist and author of COPOUT, How Governments have Failed the People on Climate with Karen Silverwood-Cope, Climate director for Brazil at the World Resources Institute (WRI),
Dr Heiko Baltzar, Professor, University of Leicester and
Principal, Land Use for Net Zero, Nature and People.
Dr Shaun Fitzgerald, Director, Centre for Climate Repair at the University of Cambridge

COP 30: The Amazon’s Climate Reckoning

Can humanity move beyond extraction — or will the same systems of exploitation that drive the climate crisis continue under new names?
#TheAmazon, home to unparalleled biodiversity and millions of Indigenous peoples, remains under siege from oil drilling, mining, industrial agriculture, and deforestation. At the same time, global climate finance mechanisms and carbon markets — designed to address the crisis — risk reinforcing extraction by commodifying nature rather than protecting it.

The Amazon’s future is humanity’s future. Raya Salter hosts Leila Salazar-Lopez, Executive Director, Amazon Watch and Dr. Debora Ley, Coordinator, Central American Network for Climate Change Sciences at #COP30 in Belem, Brazil in the heart of the Amazon region.