'Sustainable' logging operations are clear-cutting Canada's forests

A large and growing fraction of this lumber is used for wood pellet production to be burned in the EU as "green" energy.

Sure, these trees are technically renewable over decades to centuries but this doesn't matter all that much when we need to rapidly reach net zero in only about 25 years.

I think this is a very misleading argument. Old growth forests sequester a lot of carbon, which would take new growth literally centuries to match. We don't have centuries.

Clear cutting is not aimed at capturing lumber that would have otherwise fallen into the category of natural modes of tree death. We can and should be smarter about forest management but the industry has learned to speak with a forked tongue and to subborn efforts that would interfere with their short-term mindset that prioritizes maximizing extraction rates.

https://news.mongabay.com/2019/05/tall-and-old-or-dense-and-...

> Once cleared, new trees take their place and suck up more carbon.

While the old trees are burned and release more carbon because they are of better quality.

From the article:

> Environmental advocates have long pushed to end logging in primary or old-growth forests, which soak up far more climate-damaging carbon than logged-and-replanted areas.