Canada Sets Aside Its Boreal Forest as Giant Carbon Vault

[Orwellian_Ghost]

Canada sets aside its boreal forest as giant carbon vault

By banning logging, mining and oil drilling in an area twice the size of California, Canada is ensuring its boreal forests continue to soak up carbon



Canada's boreal forest soaks up 22% of the carbon stored on the earth's land surface ... Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada. Photograph: Karen Schwartz/AP

In the far north latitudes, buried within a seemingly endless expanse of evergreen forests, the authorities in Canada are building up one of the world's best natural defences against global warming.

In a series of initiatives, Canadian provincial governments and aboriginal leaders have set aside vast tracts of coniferous woods, wetlands, and peat. The conservation drive bans logging, mining, and oil drilling on some 250m acres – an area more than twice the size of California.

The sheer scale of the forest conservation drive is somewhat of an anomaly for Canada, whose government has been accused of sabotaging the global climate change talks by its development of the Alberta tar sands and its refusal to make deep cuts in its greenhouse gas emissions.

...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/oct/29/canada-boreal-forest-carbon-vault

[Cirque du So-What]

1. Good on ye, Canada!

The ideological descendants of the robber barons run things 'round here. If not for the efforts of progressives Teddy Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot, the whole country would have been clear-cut.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114248029

If the modern-day robber barons could get their way, they'd start clear-cutting what's left of US timber reserves again. I have confidence that Canada will be able to preserve their northern forests, as they are able to contain their own capitalistas better than our government is willing to do in the US.

[Tesha]

2. I'll bet the aboriginals are having Nunavut!

(Sorry!)

Tesha

[Canuckistanian]

3. It means nothing

Those "seemingly endless expanses" have little commercial value - the prime timber and mining areas have already been discovered, staked out and claimed.

Besides, the conservatives here have been pushing for an exemption to Kyoto, claiming all those lands as a "carbon sink"
and counting it AGAINST our CO2 emissions. Scientists and environmental activists aren't buying it.

We need some real action to reduce our CO2 production. And the Harper government ain't doing squat about it.

[hatrack]

4. Too bad most of it is about to become an immense carbon source, thanks to the pine beetle

Hate to bust the bubble here, but here's an update on the status of these forests.

Alberta Facing Bigger Pine Beetle Invasion Than Thought - To Slave Lake From BC's Killed Zone

EDMONTON - Alberta is facing a new and bigger invasion of tree-killing mountain pine beetles and is looking to the federal government for help in preventing the tiny insects from spreading further east into the boreal forest. Crews report a new wave of the bugs flew into the province in July from British Columbia and the mountain national parks in Alberta.

The hardest hit areas are in northwest Alberta - the same region where a high percentage of the tiny beetles died off last winter from extreme cold. Ted Morton, minister of sustainable resource development, said the beetles have penetrated as far east as Slave Lake, about 150 kilometres north of Edmonton.

"This summer's inflight from British Columbia is one of the most severe we've had - apparently more severe than the 2006 inflight," Morton told the legislature on Wednesday. "This years' flight does threaten the industry. A $9 billion industry - 38 thousand jobs. But also its effects on the boreal, the eastern slopes, the watersheds and habitat."

Morton said Alberta will have to consider new strategies to contain the beetles, which have already destroyed about one-quarter of B.C.'s pine forests and are expect to ruin 75 per cent of the pine timber by 2015.

EDIT

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x214903

http://www.metronews.ca/vancouver/live/article/353219--alberta-faces-new-bigger-mountain-pine-beetle-invasion-from-b-c

[Vidar]

5. Too bad Canada's not the world power. They'd do much better with it.

[Javaman]

6. Wow, that's mighty big of them.

:eyes:

http://www.tarsandswatch.org /

Saving the yard while the house burns down. Weeeee!!!

[FarCenter]

7. The newsprint paper business isn't what it used to be