Comments Aug 9, 2024 in response to Tim Bousquet in the Hfx Eaminer Carbon offsets are Bullshit
Regarding the Carbon Credits being BS. I didn’t know that Sierra Pacific was doing carbon offsetting. That’s rather creepy. So they make money off the trees while they are standing, but if a fire burns them day, they still make money off “salvage logging”.
These logging companies also do salvage logging on National Forest lands. The same is done here in Canada on Crown lands, etc.. It was done in northern Quebec after the big fires there in 2023.
There’s a good article on the salvage logging industry that appeared in Forbes in 2018 – about Archie Aldis “Red” Emmerson, whose company, Sierra Pacific, was largely built on salvage logging in northern California and southern Oregon. Quoting the Forbes article, “We’ll be in there before the smoke is out,” vows timber baron Red Emmerson, who Forbes estimates makes more money from logging after forest fires than anyone in America”.
I’ve spent some time in that region, so I was aware of the some of the controversy over salvage logging (the Biscuit Fire being a good example) — basically, these trees are milled and sold just like regular standing timber only they are sold off for cheap stumpage fees. The article is well worth a read. The URL is:
https://www.forbes.com/feature/archie-emmerson-timber-forest-fires-logging/#33c6854d64f9
Recently, Conservation North in B.C. put on a zoom presentation with a number of forest ecology experts, concerning salvage logging. It’s quite good, particularly Dr. Dominick DellaSala who mentions the Quebec fires – he is the final speaker. Title of the presentation was:
“Gaming the ecosystem: the truth about salvage logging”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUElSPw__Nk
Also relevant to all of this is a good video that was made after the 2023 fires in Quebec. The lumber companies wasted no time to zoom in and start salvage logging the forests that burned — again, their stumpage fees were probably pretty cheap. Here’s the URL to that documentary. Again, it is another that is well worth watching.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42oGw9uPUxI&t=289s
Probably all a lot more than anyone wants to know about, but I think that’s pretty weird about Sierra Pacific being in the carbon credit biz along with being a salvage logging company.