SOS Forests

Big Changes at Evergreen

Evergreen Magazine [here] has been the leader in forest news reporting for over two decades. The hard copy magazine business has seen its heyday, however, and Evergreen Mag has not published an issue in two years.

They are not dead. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, and like so much of the rest of the publishing world, Evergreen Foundation is going digital.

Sometime near end of this month executive director, publisher, editor, and chief bottle washer Jim Petersen will be unveiling Evergreen Magazine Online. It will be more than a periodical, though. It will be an active website updated daily with news and essays about forests, forest management, logging, sawmilling, fires, wildlife, and all things forest, in keeping with Evergreen’s long tradition of excellence.

We will keep SOS Forest readers apprised and when the Big Day comes, you will be the first to know.

As a teaser, we present a recent speech by Jim Petersen about forest biomass. The speech is entitled “We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Programming To Bring You this News Flash” and was delivered at the Western Wood Products Association Annual Meeting March 9 in Scottsdale, AZ.

The full text is [here].

Some excerpts:

… Eighty percent of the world’s energy comes from fossil fuels, so if the goal is to wean the world from fossil fuels, biomass is definitely a growth business – and what we have here is definitely a growth story. World-wide, 13 percent of our energy comes from renewable sources and 7 percent comes from nuclear. In the U.S., 86 percent of our energy comes from fossil fuels, more than half of it imported from countries that don’t like us very well. Another 8 percent of the energy we Americans consume comes from nuclear power plants. Only 6 percent comes from renewable fuels, so we definitely have a growth story here.

Biomass accounts for 10.6 percent of the world’s total energy and 79.4 percent of renewable energy. By contrast, solar, wind and ocean tides account for less that one-tenth of one percent. Most biomass is used in solid form, but since 1990, liquid biomass use has increased 84 percent per year, compared to only 20 per cent per year for wind and solar energy.

In the U.S. the energy output from renewable energy sources doubled from 2005 to 2007 – then increased another 30 percent in 2007 and 2008. That’s impressive – especially when we consider the fact that a Texas oil man was sitting in the White House. But what do these numbers really mean. Well, if we count hydroelectric power as a renewable, it means that 2.4 percent of our nation’s energy came from renewables. A growth story, for sure.

But what’s this? We’ve torn down more than 200 dams since 1999 to improve fish passage. Not to worry: more growth possibilities. And more numbers: Wind and solar output in the U.S. totaled 45.5 million megawatts in 2008. Sounds very impressive, doesn’t it - until you know that the country used 4.1 billion megawatt hours in 2008. In other words, solar and wind accounted for 1.1 percent of total U.S. consumption. Hey, it’s a start. …

Woody biomass is also a carbon sequestration story – and if you’ll pardon my pun, carbon sequestration is one of the hottest forestry stories on the planet, so hot in fact that science’s frauds and fakers are doing everything in their power to corrupt the story by misrepresenting the essential roles that active forest management and wood utilization play in sequestering carbon for very long periods of time. I love the story because it is both a forestry and forest health story, in addition to being the other half of the wildfire story which, again, is a biomass story. You cannot tell this story often enough.

Then there is the photosynthesis story – in my mind the greatest story of them all – and a story we’ve told on Evergreen pages many times over the years. This is the global warming story writ large. It is the process – dare I call it a miracle – by which plants use the free, non-polluting energy of the sun to convert water, complex carbohydrates and carbon dioxide – the chief culprit in global warming - into cellulose and thus, wood. And, miracle of miracles, the byproduct of this completely natural process is oxygen. …

You manufacture a wonderful product engineered in nature from the free, nonpolluting energy of the sun, the only building, packaging and communications material on earth that is renewable, recyclable and biodegradable, yet you absolutely refuse to talk about it, except amongst yourselves.

The public outreach work you need to fund is not expensive – but it is hard… Public outreach is a cost of doing business…

To me it is dumbfounding that your industry is again at loggerheads over whether federal biomass should be included in energy legislation. How in the world are we ever going to wrap our arms around our enormous wildfire and forest health problems in the West if we aren’t allowed to take out the trash that is piling up by the billions of tons in our national forests?

May I remind you that more than 80 percent of this nation’s citizens – measured by survey and focus group work conducted in seven major urban centers - supported the kind of thinning and forest restoration work envisioned in the Bush Administration’s Healthy Forests Initiative. An eighty percent public approval rating is much more than a political landslide, it is a political earthquake.

Thank God for my old friend, Greg Walden, who is introducing legislation that will change the definition of what constitutes biomass to include federal biomass. Congressman Walden is going to need the help of western lumbermen to get this legislation passed. I understand Ron Wyden has introduced similar legislation in the Senate. Do not let this opportunity slip through your fingers. It may be years before you get another chance.

There is no shortage of information needed to mount an offensive. You should see the pile of news releases that are e-mailed to me daily from organizations and companies clamoring for niches in the burgeoning renewable energy marketplace.

There are hopeful signs: Seneca Sawmill Company – another long time Evergreen supporter recently announced that it will build a quite large cogeneration facility next to its Eugene, Oregon sawmill; serious investor interest in building a pulp and/or OSB complex somewhere in Arizona or New Mexico; Stoltze Lumber Company – another long-time Evergreen supporter, recently announced its plans to building a cogeneration plant next to its sawmill at Columbia Falls, Montana; and Montana Governor, Brian Schweitzer’s announced intent to use at least $10 million in stimulus money to help Montana sawmills increase their capacity to process biomass.

I will readily concede that environmental litigation remains a huge problem – and is the chief reason why investment capital is not flowing to this opportunity. But my environmental friends – and I have a few – tell me there is a good deal of soul searching going on in their organizations. There is fear that some groups are simply out of control; there is a fear that private timber landowners will finally give up in disgust and sell out to developers; and there is fear of losing the infrastructure, know-how, capital and markets that you bring to the table – all of which they need in abundance to get their own renewable energy dreams off the ground.

So it may be that the ground you now jointly occupy with them is the common ground you have been looking for – the place where you can start a civil conversation and hopefully develop the mutual senses of dignity, trust and respect that has been missing from the West’s debilitating forestry debate for so many 20 years.

As for me, I hope to continue to write stories about you and your contributions to the nation’s economic and environmental well-being for many years to come. And of the stories that need telling right now, none looms larger or is more hopeful than the renewable forest biomass to energy story – not just because it can light homes and offices, but also because it can light imaginations – imaginations that may well lead us to the day when cellulose molecules and not carbon molecules will power civilization’s advancement. What a glorious day that will be.