As disaster looms in our old-growth forests, BC needs to address this burning question.
Two respected news organizations have aired recent investigative documentaries showing how trees in B.C.’s drastically over-cut primary forests are chopped down, only to be turned into wood pellets that are burned by the millions of tonnes to make electricity in the United Kingdom.
Pellets from virgin forests fuel the U.K.'s Drax Power Station, backed by politicians and subsidies
From the highway just south of Prince George, B.C., you can see the logs, thousands of them, piled neatly in rows.
They were cut from trees in old growth and primary forests in the province's Interior.
This timber won't be used to build homes or furniture, or even to make paper. These logs will be ground and compressed into tiny pellets, shipped to Europe and Asia and burned to produce fuel for electricity.
Groups have documented the logging of old growth trees in at-risk areas proposed for deferral
Two years into a three-year process to defer the logging of some of B.C.'s grandest trees in its most ecologically diverse wilderness so that forestry stewardship could undergo a vast transformation, First Nations and conservationists are decrying a lack of progress and transparency.
"The study effectively warns that the planet already left a safe climate state when it passed 1 C of global warming." . . ." But current policies are actually set to result in about 2.6 C of warming. "
Sept. 11, 2022
2 of the tipping points at highest risk are in Canada
Current rates of global warming have already moved the world perilously close to several tipping points that could send key global weather systems into irreversible collapse, a significant study from Europe has found.
Climate change is killing giant sequoias in numbers that portend ecological disaster unless radical action is taken to reverse the impacts of the climate crisis. Sequoias, once deemed “unburnable,” began to be widely destroyed by fire in 2015, and then in 2020 and 2021, California fires tripled in area covered.
Standing in a vast clearcut in British Columbia feels strangely dystopian. It’s quiet. There are no leaves to rustle, no bushes for animals to hide behind. The sun beats down and, you soon discover, there are no trees for shade.
Slash piles are your landmarks now — those mountains of branches leftover from logging. Come winter they’ll get burned. Bonfires against the snow, like a scene from Game of Thrones.
In some good news for BC drivers, Save Old Growth has stated that it will no longer be doing actions on critical infrastructure in the province. The group says the move amounts to a de-escalation of disruptive actions.
An international student leading a controversial civil resistance campaign to end old-growth logging in B.C. is fearful the Canada Border Services Agency is looking to deport him.
Zain Haq, a co-founder of the Save Old Growth (SOG) protest group behind a recent series of highway blockades across the province, has been ordered to show up at a CBSA office.
The third-year history major at Simon Fraser University who hails from Pakistan is in Canada on a study permit, a document issued by Immigration Canada.
