What If We Get It Right?
By Dave Atkins
Climate Change can be scary, I have two grandsons and I want them to be able to enjoy spending time in the forests, on the rivers and lakes as I have my whole life.
As a forest ecologist and forester I have studied old growth, the role of fire, insects and diseases in shaping our forests and I have managed public land and now our own family forest to produce sustainable, renewable resources for humans and all other life forms. I have seen significant changes since my first wildfire in 1976. Our summers are hotter, drier and longer than when I started; meaning more smoke, more intense and severe fires affecting watersheds, wildlife habitats and opportunities to use wood in place of steel, concrete, aluminum, plastic.
What gives me hope is the tremendous set of tools we have at our fingertips to solve climate change. We can and I believe we will get it right! But it won’t happen without a lot of work, coming together and challenging our old conceptions. For instance, rapidly expanding clean energy - which requires a tremendous amount of minerals, copper, lithium, iron, graphite, cobalt, many rare earth minerals. This means we must extract those minerals carefully to minimize the negative effects. But we must accept there is no silver bullet, and there are no perfect answers. Windmills, photovoltaics, geothermal, biomass, pumped hydro, and more will all be part of the picture of getting it right.
My world studying dynamic forest ecosystems demonstrates forests’ natural carbon capture and sequestration capability along with their propensity to burn, be attacked by insects, diseases and storm events. We have the potential to grow and use more wood, store more carbon and have more biological diversity if we work together and open our minds to the potential. We need to step away from old assumptions and embrace new possibilities. Mass timber can replace most of the steel and concrete in our buildings and bridges, wood fiber insulation can substitute for energy intensive fossil fuel derived materials. Using the wood from renewably, sustainably managed forests can store the carbon trees captured from the air in structures we need to use for decades and sometimes centuries. New technologies to make insulation from wood fiber, use nanocellulose particles to reduce the carbon footprint of concrete, to produce energy and biochar from “waste” wood. The biochar can help our farmers and forest owners ameliorate drought conditions by holding more water and nutrients in our soils. It can be used to make biobased thermoplastic pipes, eyeglass frames; it can be used in concrete with nanocellulose to make concrete carbon neutral.
I am confident that we can not only become carbon neutral, but go carbon negative by partnering with our natural systems to create a renewable, sustainable world through a circular economy that provides a robust, healthy, comfortable world to live in. Our biggest challenge is to open our minds and hearts to new (and old!) approaches and embrace this vision of “getting it right”.
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David Atkins is a forest ecologist and forester for 47 years. He is a dad, a gramps, a friend. He believes humans are part of nature not separate from it and therefore we need to behave as a partner in the process of sustaining ourselves and this amazing dynamic system called earth. He is a sustainabilist, which means we have to find the balance point between societal, ecosystem and economic needs.
