the Walnut Diary

This week I flipped back to The Day the Earth Stood Still and the only memorable line of movie dialogue from a pretty dismal year. American secretary of state Kathy Bates asks the alien, Keanu Reeves:  “Why have you come to our planet?”

His terse response:  “You don’t own it.”

This line jars the viewer because to a great extent our culture still draws its attitude toward the environment from the first three chapters of Genesis.  The Lord created man and placed him on earth and gave him dominion over the earth and its creatures.  This assumption causes grave harm when it becomes the freedom to destroy and pollute without cost, but for those who recognize the duty of care which comes with such “ownership”, it is a call to do what we can to restore the health of the small patches of the planet we call our own.

Gary Nielsen, MNR Climate Change Project Co-ordinator, spoke at the annual woodlot conference in Kemptville this week. “Earth ice cover is currently at its lowest point in 100,000 years. Climate change is real.  It is serious, the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced.  We have seen significant change already, and it is accelerating.   The people who will bear the brunt of its effects are in school right now.

“Charles Keeling was a graduate student in the early 1950’s when he showed that while carbon dioxide levels in water vary widely depending upon where the sample is taken, CO2 levels in air are consistent.  What happens in China or India happens immediately to us in North America.  We’re all in this together.

“Trees take in CO2 and give off oxygen in an annual cycle.  The Keeling curve traced the cycle and year over year, atmospheric carbon dioxide has been increasing on an exponential curve since the Industrial Revolution increased the population capacity of the planet.

“In our solar system Venus suffers from a runaway greenhouse effect.  Mars has no atmosphere and is glaciated. Earth is the Goldilocks planet, neither too hot nor too cold.  This is a precarious balance.  The best thinking today holds that the tipping point comes if temperatures increase another 2 degrees Celsius.  Above that point positive feedback develops: tundra stripped of ice will attract much more solar heat and accelerate the process as the frost melts.

“So far world temperatures are up .7 degrees globally, and 1.3 degrees in Ontario.

“We can’t control climate change, but we can restore forests.  Trees sequester carbon dioxide. A sustainable landscape is the goal.  The United Nations has begun the Billion Trees Program, and Ontario has made the single largest commitment:  50 million trees in the ground by 2020.

“One of the major instruments to resist climate change which lies within our control in Ontario is afforestation, that is, returning land to the forest.  Creating a healthy, diverse and sustainable environment will create the resiliency needed to face the coming challenges.”

A major problem with the forests of Eastern Ontario is the fragmentation of the tree cover.  Stewardship councils, conservation authorities and the MNR are working actively to reconnect the scattered woodlots by retiring farmland to provide the kind of density and wildlife corridors needed by many species.

The trees will be planted by contractors at a charge of 15 cents per seedling. Landowners in Leeds and Grenville who have at least 5 acres of open land available for tree planting can contact the following agencies for assistance:

Rick Knapton: Cataraqui Region Conservation Authority – 389-3651
Martin Streit: Leeds County Stewardship Council – 342-8526
Jack Henry: Grenville Land Stewardship Council – 342-8528

Eastern Ontario is a priority in the planning.  A major project was completed last year in the Toledo area.

According to the Kyoto Protocol, trees planted after December 31, 1989 will count for carbon sequestration projects.  The current thinking holds that 1 hectare will produce about 4.5 tonnes of offsets each year, worth about $89/ha/year gross.  Obviously with tradeable units of 10,000 tonnes each, there will be administrative costs, but tree planting does show some actual income potential for the land, as well as the tax advantages of returning acreage to the forest.

So what the 50 Million Trees Program offers is the chance for landowners to do their bit to fight climate change with the help of cheap trees, free planting, and reduced property taxes.

Gary Nielsen concluded his address to the landowners with a few key points. “We don’t know how people will behave in the next 100 years. Will the economic forces or the environmental forces carry the day? Fighting climate change is like slowing down the Queen Elizabeth II.  It doesn’t stop on a dime.”

Another interesting development emerged at the Kemptville Woodlot Conference in an address by Robert Lyng, Director of the Ontario Power Generation Biomass Initiative.  Lyng spent a lot of time with graphs and I tend to be skeptical of such presentations, but the bottom line for OPG seems to be that they plan to burn wood pellets in their coal boilers for hydro generation as soon as the law requires them to do so.  To me this looks like a potential shot in the arm for the pulpwood industry.

UPDATE: February 17, 2010 Robert Lyng came back for an update at this year’s Kemptville Woodlot Conference. He detailed plans to burn wood and plant fibre pellets at four coal-fired generating stations, two on the shore of Lake Superior, one in the Lake St. Clair area, and one on Lake Erie. He identified areas of crown land as the source of the wood fibre for the initial stage of the project. I may have spoken too soon when I suggested this has potential to boost the pulpwood industry. Distances are too great. There’s nothing set up for Eastern Ontario.

Another presenter who runs a large sawmill in Eastern Ontario explained that it is the market for low grade wood fibre which makes or breaks a sawmill operation. The depressed pulpwood market leaves all sawmills on the edge of survival. Even worse, American companies desperate for cash are dumping surplus wood products in Toronto. In some cases lumber is available for sale in Toronto for less than Eastern Ontario landowners are currently getting for standing timber.