Too Far Down This Road

My last (for a while) post thinking about global warming.  I just finished a two-day seminar on the subject, which is what made me review.  There is some overlap in the posts (sorry) but they also can stand by themselves.  

The world cannot & will not reduce CO2 emissions any time soon. CO2 we have already emitted will be around a long time and the world will emit more in 2050 than it does now. Experts disagree about how much the earth will warm or the seas will rise, but they will. It is coming and we can do nothing to stop it. So what do we do?

Solve the right problem

We missed prevention and now are in the mitigation and adaption phase. There never really was a prevention opportunity. Prevention was no longer an option by the time we recognized the problem. As late as the 1980s, scientists still warned about global cooling. The current interglacial period was ending, they said. Aggressive government action to reverse that would have been harmful. Decision makers were naturally skeptical when the new -opposite – threat came along. Besides, they were busy dealing with current life on earth threat, ozone depleting chemicals. Anyway greenhouse gas emitting technologies were (and remain) baked into human systems. Real alternatives never had a real chance. (Kyoto was too late and too lame.) So let’s just move on.

After recognizing the true nature of the problem, we should work to avoid the worst-case scenario and reduce emissions to the extent possible. For example, we need to use more nuclear power and generally encourage higher prices for oil and other fossil fuels to promote alternatives. We also need to concentrate on the places where the greatest amount of NEW emission will originate. Europe and the U.S. can work to limit emissions, but the big growth will come from places like China & India.

Stop moralizing

Then stop the moralizing and the panic. Adapting to climate change is an engineering problem. Global warming is not really a mystery.   Although we don’t understand all the variables, it is a naturally explained process. It is not the retribution for crimes against Gaia or the wrath of angry nature.  Even in its worst-case projections, it is not the biggest change the earth has ever experienced, nor it is the worst human (or hominids) have endured. Our big brains developed in response to earlier episodes of dramatic climate change. We didn’t get to the top of the food chain by being stupid and can adapt to this too.

It was warmer before

For most of the history of terrestrial life on earth there were no glaciers at all. Temperate forests grew near the poles and tropical rain forests extended well into the latitudes of Canada or Siberia. By all indications, life was perfuse on the warm globe and successful. The problem of climate change is one of location. Plants, animals and humans are adapted to today’s climate. They are not easily moved, but change does not mean immediate destruction. Some forest types in the southern Appalachians or on high ground in the Sonora region, for example, are characteristic very different climates and are relics of conditions long gone. Natural systems can persist for a long time after conditions have changed, but if struck by catastrophes, they may not come back under natural conditions. Human intervention can sometimes create or recreate such ecosystems (if that is desirable).

A tree cannot move, but forests can

Beyond that, most species of plants and most animals are hardy over large ranges. Most species of trees can grow from Florida to Wisconsin and beyond. The mix is different, but you can find many of the same species in both places. As the climate changes, the mix will change too, but people unfamiliar with forest ecology may not be able to tell the difference.

To mitigate this problem we can facilitate movement. For example, avoid using plants near the southern edge of their range. (My pine trees near the northern end of their natural range will probably grow better in greenhouse conditions.) It is also important to leave corridors. North America has more tree species than Europe. Why? It has to do with the direction of the mountain chains. In N America, the Appalachians and Rockies extend north/south. Eurasia has a fairly consistent mountain mass east/west from the Pyrenees to the Himalayas. During the last ice age, as forest types retreated south, their seeds ran up against high altitudes in Eurasia and many didn’t survive. In North America, this was not a factor. We need to ensure that natural communities can advance north with the climate.

Nature is resilient. What about us?

Our infrastructure and methods of working are built around current conditions. Some of this is not a real problem. No farmer is growing the same crops using the same methods as his father. These are routine changes. Physical infrastructure is a bigger problem, but it is more political or legal than material. It is costly to change infrastructure, but infrastructure does not last forever and is constantly renewed. The problem is the routing. Roads and railroads run through existing right of ways. Moving them may be very difficult.

Location of cities is an obvious challenge, but in most cases we are not talking wholesale relocation. We could mitigate future problems simply by being smarter today. For example, with satellite mapping, we can tell the elevation of a place within a meter and project how much water it would take to flood it. We would be smart to avoid building permanent structures soggy sites. It doesn’t make sense to build on flood-prone places, whether or not we have climate change.

We also need to look at all the options and we Americans don’t have to invent everything.  Let’s look to good practices worldwide. Brazil has been working on alcohol fuel for four decades. Arid Australia is a leader in allocating scarce water resources. Although not currently the world leader, it might be India that soon lead the world in biotechnology.

But in the end we might have some great options from the science of biotechnology. Biotechnology can produce plants that require less water, fertilizer and energy to produce. But the connection is even more direct. Biotechnology is already contributing to the production of biofuels and may soon make the production of ethanol from cellulous faster and easier. Cellulose alcohol is the holy grail of liquid fuels. That would mean we could make fuel out waste products such as wood chips or stalks, or from easily grown and ecologically benign crops such as switchgrass.

Paradigms change and we can make them change. If we think only about how things are today, we can never solve our problems. In fact, it is likely that today’s problems CANNOT be solved with today’s methods. We can do it. It requires a leap of faith, but it is a leap of faith in human intelligence and our ability to learn & adapt.

We are standing at a crossroads where our provision of energy, water and food are radically changed. These three factors will be more completely integrated than ever before. All change is difficult, but if done right this one will make all (or at least most) of us much better off and make our lifestyles more sustainable.

A cooler earth?

But perhaps the greatest mitigating thing we ought to do is one we currently do not understand. Can global warming lead to cooling? As the world was warming up from its last ice age (w/o the help of humans BTW) about 11000 years ago, it suddenly got another cold blast. This is called the Younger Dryas stadial. The cause is thought to have been a sudden influx of fresh water into the Atlantic, which interfered with the heat transfer from the tropics to the poles. Some scientist think this could happen again. Although the Younger Dryas event involved the aburpt breaking of an ice dam and a lot more fresh water in a short time, conditions could be similar if glaciers rapidly melt. It would be nothing like the movie “The Day After Tomorrow”, since RAPID change in the real world means it took place over the course of about 50 years and it was not global, but cold temperatures in Europe and N. America would be a problem. An urgent priority would be to understand this mechanism and – if possible – prevent it from doing damage. But currently anything in this subject area is just speculation. My own take on it is that activists want to cover all the bases so that they can blame any weather scenario on human activity.

Always look at the bright side of life

I would make no investments in beachfront property and inhabitants of low islands may consider seeking higher-level opportunities, but we humans have faced worse. As a matter of fact, the Younger Dryas unpleasantness probably forced our ancestors into inventing cereal agriculture. Anyway, we are too far gone down this road to go back and start over.  Our options only include things we can do now, not what we should have done before.  Whether big events are blessings or curses depends on how you adapt and what happens next.  

Government, Markets & the Environment

Markets are a little out of style these day, but my faith is intact. I don’t seek or expect to find perfection.  Imperfect as they may be, markets will be back because nothing else works better; we need them.  Over reasonable time periods, markets produce in great abundance whatever goods or services society wants. They can do this because they are based on the greatest of renewable resources – human ingenuity. The market is a mechanism that focuses the genius of the people on what they consider most important.  When the innovation of the market is focused on improving the environment, we can expect good results.

The Difference Between a Medicine & a Poison is Dosage and Usage

Let me first stipulate some government regulation is indeed required for a clean environment.  There is no such thing as a pure system and market incentives alone are insufficient to address externalities, the things that people don’t own or own collectively.  But the choices and intelligent inherent in the market mechanism is still the way to go most of the time.  We just need to employ the appropriate tools at the appropriate time and against the appropriate problems. Command and control regulation was appropriate and successful in going after large point source pollution in the 1970s. Although many of these problems have been largely eliminated, we still need regulations to prevent their recurrence. However, as the problems we face become finer and more diverse, we will need more and more to rely on incentives for innovation and market mechanisms to finish the job. Command and control is the big chain saw that creates the gross shape. We needed the chain saw, but now it is time to put it aside. We are at the fine carving stage and it is time to use different tools.

Not in Spite of Governments Best Efforts; Because of Them

We need to learn from experience. The big government chain saw is useful but also dangerous. It has solved many environmental problems but many of today’s environmental problems result from earlier government interventions. To err is human, but if you want to screw up on a really monumental scale you need to enlist the help of big government.

Private industry could never by itself have produced the resources needed to destroy the wetlands of Louisiana in order to build sometimes underwater cities, such as parts of New Orleans. Government water projects & subsidies encourage the growing of water hungry crops in the middle of our southwestern deserts. Government mandated the use of asbestos in of our buildings and local building codes often prevent sustainable buildings. Government agricultural policies and trade restrictions turn over many square miles of our land to inappropriate crops while at the same time starving farmers in developing countries by subsidizing competition against them. Government programs to protect jobs allow dirty inefficient industries to stay in business long after the market would shuttered them as unprofitable.

My personal favorite result of government master plans is kudzu. Anybody who has been around the countryside in the Southeast knows this persistent invader that shrouds everything in its way. It can grow a foot a day and choke a forest in a matter of weeks. It costs farmers and foresters a fortune every year to keep it down. In the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps planted kudzu all over the south. Farmers were paid as much as eight dollars an acre (bigger money in those days)  to plant fields of the vines in the 1940s. I guess we can consider that a successful government program.  They are well established now.

Most of these things were done with good intentions & they were often based on what was considered the best the science of the time. The science was right about Kudzu. It was and remains an excellent way to prevent erosion. It just is a little too enthusiastic about covering-up everything else. We need to be very careful with any big plan. Each generation says “back then they THOUGHT, now we KNOW” but they always learn a generation too late. If you think I am wrong, consider the current ethanol subsidies and the rush to biofuels. Biofuels are a great idea, but only when appropriate feedstocks are used. The Europeans have had to rethink their biofuels programs after they learned that whole forest in Indonesia and Malaysia were being cut and burned to establish palm oil plantations. Sure enough, palm oil burns clean, but all those trees that used to be the forest don’t. In the U.S. we will come to regret replacing big oil with big corn if that becomes our main ethanol fuel stock.

A Proper Choice Architecture

A proper environmental policy involves government in the role of setting up incentives and then leaving the decision making to those who are closest to the problem and have the most to gain or lose. It does not pick winners or losers. It will by its nature be iterative, gradual and diverse. You cannot expect immediate effects, but you will get a better long term result and a sustainable solution when you bring a wider spectrum of human intelligence into the game.  The genius of a lot of people solving their own problems with their resources always outweighs that of a small group of experts trying using other people’s money to come up with a global solution that applies to others.

There is an old joke. This guy comes into the doctor’s office. “Doc,” he says raising his arm, “It hurts when I do this.” The doctor replies, “Then stop doing that.”

A good first step for a better environment is for the government to stop doing some of the things it is doing now. For example, the government should not subsidize flood insurance. If you are building your home or business in a place with a reasonable risk, you can get insurance from a private vendor. If firms whose business it is to insure you think it is too risky at an affordable price, why should the government step in and be a bigger fool? This simple move would almost immediately create de-facto conservation zones on most barrier islands and fragile estuaries and cost the taxpayers nothing. In fact we would save money by getting out of the fool support, insurance & protection business. 

Another thing the government could do is to phase itself out of the water business. Where water is scarce, it is usually governed by century old rules that were created to encourage people to farm deserts by giving them government subsidized water. Maybe it was a good idea back then, but not any more.  As a result of these antiquated practices, water today is distributed like bread in the old Soviet Union. The first guy in line gets a lot at a low price. Those with political influence do not have to stand in line at all. Other people get nothing much or nothing at all. The simple market solution is to charge a market rate for the water. People will stop wasting water when it is no longer almost free. Farmers will decide that maybe it is not worth growing that cotton in the middle of deserts and land will revert to uses more in line with its natural state. I said PHASE out. We cannot just make people quit all at once, since many people have their life savings tied up in the current system, but let’s start today.  

The most far reaching thing we can do, however, is a kind of an earth tax. This tax would largely REPLACE income taxes. We could determine the externality cost of most forms of energy and tax accordingly. That is why I favor a carbon tax. It is not only a way to raise revenue, but also a means to encourage wiser use of resources. For example, you would not have to ban SUVs if the price of gas was high enough. People would make choices rationally. A person might load seven passengers into that SUV and have a much smaller impact on the environment than those seven individual Prius drivers and each would be paying accordingly.  That is the beauty of allowing choice.

Bigger government alone is never the solution for environmental problems. The most intrusive governments (communists) were by far the biggest polluters. Their system created so much pollution that it wore down stone and still managed to produce poor economic results. It was amazing how much better it got when the communists lost power.

A smart government that creates incentives toward a goal, but does not mandate precise means will be able to use the market mechanism to produce both a cleaner environment AND a better economy.

The environment is not a left-right issue.  Some have just framed the issue in their terms. “Want a clean world,” they say, “then you must let government boss you around.”  Experience does not bear this out.  We can understand and recognize the problem w/o accepting their big government control as the solutions. Command & control was a stage we needed to pass through to get to where we are today.  It worked back then. It was fitting, proper and necessary back in 1970, but it is not 1970 anymore.  We now need to fine tune and we cannot command that.  The market mechanism is the future.   With good choice architecture, it will harness human imagination, intelligence and innovation as it always does.

A New World for Global Warming

The global warming debate has taken a responsible turn.  Talk was cheaper than oil for a long time.  Countries around the world talked a lot and did next to nothing confident that they could blame the U.S. for not taking decisive action.   Domestic opponents had similar opportunities.   They could blame the “naysayers”.   To be a global warming opponent in good standing, all you really needed to do was go to the Al Gore movie and complain about the plight of the polar bears. 

For all the sound and fury about Kyoto, from 2000-2008 greenhouse gas emissions rose in both the EU and the U.S.   Guess emissions went up LESS?  Hint: not Europe. In other words, doing “nothing” worked about as well as doing something.  But our Euro friends got to stand on the moral high ground.  Last year, BTW, U.S. CO2 emission DROPPED by 2.8%, the biggest drop since we started to keep CO2 emission data.

But I should not be too snarky. Kyoto was and remains a seriously flawed agreement.   There was never any chance that the Senate would ratify it.   In fact, back in the 1990 ALL the Democrats and ALL the Republicans preemptively voted that they would not accept the agreement since it set up all sorts of silly expectations on the part of developing countries giving them a free ride and putting obligations only on the U.S. and other developed countries.  There is no way that we can achieve any serious climate change goals if we leave out the big polluters of the future.  China is the world’s biggest CO2 producer.  India, Indonesia, Brazil and others are growing fast.  You just cannot exempt the future trouble spots. Kyoto was too much about international wealth redistribution and not enough about environmental progress.

Nevertheless, U.S. must be part of a solution. I have been observing European efforts to create a carbon market. It is easy to find fault.  So far, it really doesn’t work, but we can learn from their experience.  If the U.S. pushes in the same direction, together we can make it work.

BTW – The French get  78% of their electricity from nuclear, which produces no greenhouse gas. Americans should be able to do as well, but we manage only around 20% and have not authorized & built a new plant since 1973.  We have to put nuclear power back into the mix.  It is safe and clean. Despite all the fears, In its sixty year history, NOBODY has ever died in a U.S. nuclear power accident.  It cannot be business as usual. Addressing climate change will require lifestyle changes. It will cost money and change comfortable relationships. Nobody wants to take these steps. I know this will come as a surprise, but not everyone is honest in carrying out their promises. Countries will obfuscate and cheat. Many world leaders were happy that the U.S. was not pushing the climate change solution bandwagon. They could make sanctimonious statements of concern and hide behind the U.S. while avoiding the really hard choices. Now we are stripping away this cover.

Just because we cannot do everything does not mean we have an excuse to do nothing. I am not in panic mode. I do not believe that we will cause irreparable damage if we do not address the problem immediately, but we certainly need to do something effective very soon.

Price will be the primary mechanism for sorting out this environmental problem and I have long advocated higher energy prices. Anyone who demands lower energy prices is not serious about solving environmental problems.

There is good news. Our experience with solving environmental problems has been good. We managed to address serious problems such as sewage, particulates, acid rain and CFCs more rapidly and at lower cost than anyone predicted. The proof is that we no longer worry much about these problems and they are no longer subjects of national debate. Climate change is a bigger challenge because it is international and carbon is ubiquitous, but if the U.S. and the EU are on board, it will work. That is the plus side of economy hegemony. We can set the standards that others must follow if they want to participate in world markets. We need to move while we still have such power.

There is lots of money to be made in greenhouse gas markets. We can do well by doing good. My concern is that erstwhile climate activists will stand in the way. You would not guess this from the rhetoric, but if you listen carefully you find the fault lines. Addressing climate change will mean higher energy prices (which “hurt the poor”) and job disruption and displacement (which hit union workers hardest).   Some businesses will be nimble enough to take advantage of the changing situation and make money; others not so much. I hear the complaints already. The quick and clever will do well.  Our environment will be better as we develop sustainable solutions, but opponents will only see those “left behind.”

BTW – The picture at top is a garden near Smithsonian now and the picture at the bottom is the same place in early February.   Right after the Obama inauguration, some people claimed that the Mall was damaged and may never recover.  It is hard to see on the sign, but it complains that only time will tell if it will come back.   A few months later, it did.  Nature is resilient.

Agriculture, Silvaculture & Ordinary Culture

Land use patterns reflect history and cultural priorities.   Physically Parana looks a lot like the piedmont in Virginia or the Carolinas, but land use patterns are very different.  The southeast U.S. is dominated by relatively small holders, who practice mixed agriculture.    The average sized farm in Virginia is 181 acres.  Renato told me that farms of less than 1000 acres were uncommon in Parana.  They are actually more agribusiness, often run by professional managers using paid labor.   Forestry is even more professionalized than standard farming.  Valor Florestal is a good example.

There is some convergence between the U.S. and Brazil.  Our agricultural enterprises are becoming larger and more professionally managed too.  But we have a long way to go before we have a similar pattern.    Land patterns reflect history of settlement.    South of Parana is the State of Santa Catarina.  It was settled by immigrant families from Germany and Italy.   The farms there are smaller and more diverse.

Ownership patterns affect how incentives work and how land is managed.    A forest owner who also raises hogs or drives truck is more likely to put off harvests in times of low prices or be flexible with investments.    Virginia forest owners also are closer to their land, usually literally, than investors or big owners.   Hunting is common in the Old Dominion and many, if not most, Virginia forests are managed for wildlife as well as timber.   I see advantages and disadvantages to each form of ownership.  Professional management will produce more timber per acre and employ the latest scientific technologies.   On the other side, owner operators who live on or near the land, who walk across it themselves, have greater incentive to look to a bigger picture.

Conservation, Preservation and Remarkable Productivity

The Brazilian State of Parana spreads across region where four biological regimes meet and mix: the Atlantic forest from the east; from the north tropical species; the south provides a sub-tropical temperate mix, while the west is represented in more arid, seasonal rain vegetation called sertao. 

See the video here

All four are represented in the Vale do Corisco in the pictures above.  The valley is a unique ecological zone because of the mixing of species and it is very beautiful.  The water falls about a hundred meters straight down.   You can hear the loud splashing miles away, about as close as you can get since no roads or even good paths lead to the base of the falls, and none are planned.   Even getting to this distant overlook requires a drive over dirt roads and a key to a gate on private property. The falls creates its own, much moister, sub-climate.  When we passed in the morning, the whole valley was completely obscured by a heavy fog.  Valor Florestal owns this valley and they are conserving/restoring it to its natural state.  

As impressive as the falls was, the trees on the surrounding plantation were equally remarkable.   Valor Florestal manages more than 100,000 hectares (significantly more than 200,000 acres) of forest.   A little more than 60% is in productive commercial forests.   The rest, around 40%, is in ecological reserves.   Foresters in Brazil are like their cousins in America.  They want to produce wood, but also protect and conserve natural areas to provide wildlife habitat, maintain native species and protect water resources.

Loblolly pine grows well in Brazil, but various species of tropical pines grow even better.   These tropical pines are replacing loblolly and slash pines everywhere where frost is not a factor.   In this respect, microclimates are very important.    Sometimes a few meters of elevation or proximity to a body of water of an open field can make the life or death difference.   But where the tropical pines grow, they grow big. 

 I could not believe it when Renato told me that a stand of pines that I would have guessed were at least seventeen years old, were only six.   A picture is worth 1000 words so look for yourself.   A sixteen year old or even a fourteen year old stand is ready to harvest for saw timber.   The fastest growing trees seem to by a central American pine (pinus maximinoii) but three varieties of Caribbean pine (caribaea bahamensis, caribaea, & hondurensis) were also almost growing fast enough for us to watch them.   Some of them are ninety feet high by the time they are seventeen years old.    Valor Florestal is in the lead in developing these species and the tests are looking good in the first generations.  It looks probable that loblolly and slash will be replanted only in places where frost hits.  Below you see a sixteen year old stand of p maximinoii with Renato to show the scale. 

It was with some sadness as I watched the last stand of a thirty-two year old loblolly forest.   Renato told me that we would not see this again in Brazil.   They will be going with a shorter (22 year) rotation for loblolly.    The tropical pines may be significantly faster.   Below is a thirteen year old p caribaea and Tim for size comparison.

See harvest video here.

Such high productivity is very good for the environment.   It allows the production of wood that societies around the world need to be sustainably grown on smaller acreages in less time.   This is what allows the conservation of the more sensitive natural areas I described above.  The truck below is driving past a SIX year old stand of Caribean pine.

Nevertheless, while I am impressed by the speed, it takes some of the satisfaction out of forestry.    I like to think of a forest as the living organism that links our past with our future.  I like the idea that I am benefiting from the work of previous generations while I am planting for my grandchildren.   If the rotation becomes fast enough, it will just be another short term crop.   I guess I like the forest part of forestry more than the business part.    Maybe I should start growing oak trees.   Take a look at the falls one more time.

Outlawing Sustainable Native Forests

The Parana pine is not a true pine.   If you look closely, you will see that it doesn’t have needles.   But it is a conifer native to the southern cone of South America and it is sublimely beautiful.   I have enjoyed them since I first saw them a quarter century ago.   There might be more of them if not for well-intentioned laws.

The Brazilian government makes it illegal to harvest a native tree like the Parana pine.   The law is meant to protect them, but what it ends up doing is making the trees practically useless.   Nobody can develop sustainable forestry with these species because even if you plant them yourself, you can never legally harvest them.    The best way to protect anything is to make it practically useful.  The loblolly pine is in no danger of becoming rare, for example.  Why is that? 

Sustainable forestry should be the goal of anyone truly interesting in protecting the environment.    There are many flavors of sustainable forestry, but all of them require some management of the land which means cutting some trees.  We really do not have a zero option.  Humans are present in the world and affect all aspects. It is better to recognize our responsibility than to neglect our duty by pretending we can just do nothing except make nice sounding laws.

Sustainable forestry would be possible with native species, but for now that is illegal. Instead the law almost requires the use of non-native imports.  You often get what you reward, even if that is not your intention.  In most cases the result counts more than the good intention.  The road to hell, after all, is paved with good intentions.

Antipodal Pines

No pines are native to southern Brazil, but it seems to be the world’s best place to grow them. (The beautiful trees you see above in the front are “Parana pine,” but they are not a true pine.)  Timber cutting is an old tradition here and most of the native forest was cleared more than a century ago and converted to pasture for livestock or large scale farming, but good forestry is relatively new.  

It was only about forty years ago that a lot of people became aware of the great local potential to grow pine lumber.   The first species introduced on a large scale were our own loblolly and slash pines.   These were natural choices, because of their proven record in commercial forests in the SE U.S.  and the many years of  good silvaculture had developed around them.    

They grew even faster in Brazil, since they left most of their pests such as the southern pine beetle behind them and southern Brazil’s moist and moderate climate.   The pines you see above are thireen years old and the logs below are from a thirty-two year old stand.  Nevertheless, the loblolly pines I saw at Valor Florestal in Parana State were not that much bigger than similar aged pines in the U.S.  Parana has other advantages, both natural and social. 

32 year old loblolly pine logs in Parana, Brazil on May 11, 2009

An important advantage is the endless growing, harvesting and planting season.    The practice in Parana is to harvest, prepare the site and plant the next generation within the same week.  I saw pines planted essentially in the wake of the harvesting machines.   All they do is wait for a good rain, which comes with certainty, even in the so-called dry season, and plant right after that.  Below you see the clearcut in front was cut a couple days ago and is already being replanted.  The trees behind are only six months old.

Site preparation consists of rolling and sometimes cutting a furrow with a plow pulled by a tractor.  Renato, a forester from Valor Florestal, told me that they never use fire, almost never need herbicide and do not fertilize.   The State of Parana has practically outlawed the use of fire, and Renato says that they don’t need it anyway.   Natural decay is so rapid in this environment that the slash left on the ground quickly is returned to the nutrient cycle.   Fertilization has so far been unnecessary, but Renato thinks that they may need to begin soon.   The quick rotations are taking a lot out of the soil and they are studying biosolids and inorganic fertilizers to put it back.

There are some disadvantages to plantations in Brazil.  One is rapid growth itself.    Pine from southern Brazil is used in plywood, fiberboard and molding, but it is not dense enough for structural timber.   Some pests attack trees.  Monkeys are an unexpected problem.   Those cute monkeys that you saw on “Night at the Museum” or the not so cute on “Outbreak” strip the bark off pine trees and they tend to attack the most valuable dominant individuals.    Renato says that they are not sure if they eat the bark or are after the sweet tasting sap, but their activities kill trees outright or weaken them so that they are susceptible to the other local pest, a type of wood wasp.   Ants are also a danger to newly planted trees.  I understand that these are not the ordinary ants that we have back home, but rather a kind of industrial strength tropical variety.   

Below is a 32-year old loblolly pine plantation being harvested now.  It is probably the last of its kind in Parana, as they will go with shorter rotations.

I will write more later.

2009 Virginia Tree Farmer of the Year

Below is the draft of my article on the tree farmer of the year. 

Monte & Peggy Swann cultivate 1650 acres of rolling farmland in Northumberland County on Virginia’s Northern Neck.  Although most of their income comes from grain production, they manage more than 240 acres devoted to forestry and well managed cove forests interspersed among grain producing fields protect watercourses, prevent excess nutrients from entering tributary systems and reduce loss of highly erodible soil.   

The Swann forest lands have been enrolled in the American Tree Farm System since 1957, making it one of the older continuous tree farms in Virginia,  But the Swann family didn’t start conservation only fifty years ago.  They have been practicing sustainable forestry for almost a century before that they were officially certified as a tree farm.

The home farm has been in the Swann family for almost 150 years and generations of Swann’s have not only kept the land productive but also enhanced the productive capacity of the farms nutrients and soils. Monte Swann farms land across from forests that once supported Peggy Swann’s family.   Peggy’s father ran a local saw mill operation.   Some of the timber he cut, especially rougher cuts from the poplar, hickory and gum, were made into pallets and fruit boxes for National Fruit Products.  

So the Swanns are part of the local fabric of society and this generation of Swanns is as committed to keeping the land sustainable in the generations to come.  The Swann farm is an outstanding example of multiple productive use of the land, which includes timber production, grain farming, scenic management, wildlife habitat improvement and personal recreational use.  

The topsoils on the Swann farms are a rich mix of loams and clays, but some of the same characteristics that make them so productive also make them fragile and easily erodible. 

Monte Swann practices no-till agriculture, which doesn’t tear up the soil and leaves the soil intact. It also minimizes the need for pesticides and herbicides, while holding more sequestered carbon and nutrients in the soil.  No-till systems are also beneficial for water resources.   They have four to eight times greater water infiltration rates than the tilled fields next door and they hold the soils a lot better, something of crucial importance for the loose soils of the Northern Neck of Virginia.  If all this was not enough, no-till leaves year-round cover and crop residue on the fields that hold the soil and provide off-season habitat for wildlife.  Many experts believe no till systems will help bring abundant quail back to the Virginia countryside.   Monte Swann goes one better as wildlife habitat by creating soft edges between his fields and forests and planting quail friendly plants such as Lespedeza.

The Northern Neck was one of the first areas of Virginia to be settled after the founding of Jamestown.  George Washington, James Madison, James Monroe and Robert E. Lee were all born here.   But only recently has the region come under intense development pressure.    Its superb and beautiful natural location, bounded by the Rappahannock and Potomac rivers and Chesapeake Bay, means that people attracted to waterfront property love the Northern Neck and its proximity to the burgeoning Washington Metro area ensures that the attractions do not go unnoticed.   As neighbors sell to developers and new subdivisions sprout like mushrooms around him, maintaining his own land in its environmentally and economically sustainable condition becomes more of a challenge for Monte Swann.   

Mr. Swann understands that his land is part of the greater whole that is the Northern Neck.  His land provides indispensable ecological services.    The water that soaks into the soil or runs off the Swann land flows eventually into the Potomac River and then into the Chesapeake Bay.  Long-established stream management zones have been protecting water quality for many years and continue to do so.

It is not hard to see how Peggy and Monte Swann’s farm demonstrates the ideals of conservation championed for many years by the American Tree Farm System.  Their lands provide abundant habitat for wildlife, a place for outdoor recreation and protection for water resources, all the while producing agricultural and wood products to sustain the present and build the future.

The Virginia Tree Farm Committee congratulates the Swann family and we were honored to be able to name them as the Virginia tree farmers of the year.

Environmental Value Chain

A chain is only as good as its weakest link.  When making judgments, you have to look at the whole chain from start to finish.    This is true in any business and it is even more crucial in environmental affairs.  Some products may look very green in their current form, but are not when you consider where they are coming from or where they are going. 

Wood is the most environmentally friendly building or structural product when you look at the whole ecological value chain.  

Start on the ground.   As a forest grows, it removes pollution from the air, keeps water clean, provides wildlife habitat and makes the world more beautiful.   The production of wood is environmentally friendly.   This contrasts with other materials, such as plastic, concrete or metal, all of which must be pulled from the earth and are negative in their environmental impacts during production.

Harvesting of trees requires the use of fuels and may result in pollution released into the air.   Even well-managed forest harvests will impact local water quality.   These are serious issues, but can be minimized.  They also occur only once in many decades and are much more than compensated by the many years of beneficial growth.    If you look over a thirty-five year pine rotation, it is clear that the net environmental benefits are overwhelming.

Beyond that, nothing exists in isolation.    If you compare forestry to almost any other land use, forestry is the most sustainable and environmentally friendly activity.  Compared to other products, the comparison is so extreme that we might actually miss it.   Twenty years after a operations, a mine, quarry or oil well is still a hole in the ground unless costly reconstruction has been done.

Twenty years after a harvest a forest is … a forest with young trees growing robustly. 

I write the Tree Farmer of the Year article for “Virginia Forests.”   These guys have usually been in the business for years and they have pictures.  I am always amazed to see the old pictures and hearing about the changes.   I recall standing in a mature pine forest in Greenville County and talking to the owner about his land.   He showed me an old black and white photo of his grandfather standing in the “same” grove of trees in the same spot where we were.   But it was not the same.    This land had been harvested TWICE since the old man stood proudly among his pines.   His grandson could do the same and future generations would also have the chance to walk among the pines.   That is what renewable means.

Wood is completely renewable.   As I wrote earlier, renewable is even better than recyclable

But what happens after you are done with the wood.  We like to think our houses will last forever, but most won’t.  Wood is easily disposed of or cycled back into the natural world.   Wood can be burned as fuel.  It releases CO2 at that time, but this is the same CO2 recently absorbed.    Burning wood is recognized as a carbon neutral activity for that reason.    If thrown away, wood decays.  It doesn’t take long before yesterday’s tree is fertilizer for tomorrow’s.   This is in striking contrast to other materials.   Steel can be recycled at a high energy cost.   If thrown away, it will rust away after many years.   Concrete also can be recycled with much effort.  If thrown away it lasts pretty much forever.   While it creates no particular environmental hard, it is a form of garbage that never goes away.   Plastic is the most persistent product.  Some plastics will remain in the environment almost forever.   Recycling is a good thing when it can be done with plastic, but it really only postpones the problem.   The plastic water bottle may be turned into a carpet, but eventually it will end up in a landfill where it will stay … forever. 

We need to use all sorts of materials: metal, plastic, glass, stone, concrete, various composites and wood.   They are all appropriate for some uses.   When you look at the total ecological value chain, wood deserves a lot of consideration.

Renewable is Even Better than Recyclable

We have to be in on the takeoff.  Too often we are just there for the crash landing.  A lot of policies that affect forestry are made w/o significant input from anybody who works in forestry or even understands it.  I thought about this during the VFA convention and it was reinforced today when I saw this article from Scientific American.   I commented under “Broadnax” but in case you don’t want to follow the link, let me sum up.

The article starts with an ecological dilemma: paper or plastic.  I understand that, but then they talk about deforestation … in paper.  A person involved with forestry knows this is a complicated issue.  Most paper comes from pulp wood.   In the U.S. these are often small trees thinned from larger forests.  The thinning, as in your flower or vegetable garden, allows other plants to grow stronger and better.  In the case of a forest, it also lets light reach the ground so that herbaceous plants can grow, making it a better wildlife habitat.    If/when there is low demand for pulp, forest owners cannot afford to thin.  This means that the forests get too thick, where they are susceptible to fire and beetle damage and where the forest floor becomes a bit of a wildlife desert.   

The irony is that by NOT using paper, you may be contributing to deforestation by making forests less healthy and more prone to disease and general destruction.    Ecology is a funny thing with all its counterintuitive connections and implications.

Above – there is no garden w/o a gardener.

So a lot depends on WHERE the product comes from as well as what it is made of and how that product gets to market.   Wood is a carbon sink, so forestry removes carbon from the air, while (if done as it should be) providing wildlife habitat, clean water, recreation and better air quality.   IF your paper or wood product comes from an American forest, you are probably NOT contributing to deforestation and may well to encouraging the growth of healthy American forests.

The concept the SciAm article handed well was the ecological chain.  (They just missed some of the key links with regard to forestry. )  You have to look at the whole lifecycle of the product from the time it is mined, drilled or grown in the earth until the time it goes back.   Wood does very well in this respect.

Wood is not 100% recyclable in most products.  It is something better.   Wood is 100% renewable.   

Well, I am not exactly accurate re recyclable.  While may not be recycled into other human products, wood is the ultimate recyclable material, since when it stops being a product useful for humans, it returns to the soil and fertilizes the next generation of trees.  I will say more about the ecological value chain tomorrow and make some comparisons.