This huge modern tree killer is called a feller-buncher. Courtesy of Battle Creek Alliance.
A new study on the impacts of the logging and wood products industry in Shasta and Siskiyou Counties has found such economic activities emit an average of 4 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent per year, equal to the annual emissions of 883,000 gas-powered passenger vehicles.
The estimated climate damages caused by the greenhouse gas emissions are $487 million to $1.4 billion per year, which far exceeds the revenue generated by logging and wood products.
The kicker? According to the study, California does not currently report or regulate GHG emissions from industrial logging activities because they are erroneously considered carbon neutral. The emissions produced by the industry statewide is estimated to be 17 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent per year.
According to the California Air Resources Board, total GHG emissions were 371 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent in 2022. That figure includes the transportation, industrial, electricity, agriculture, commercial and residential sectors. The timber industry’s estimated 17 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent statewide are not counted in this total. In comparison, the agriculture sector emitted 22 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent, which were counted.
The new study, “Climate Impacts of Logging and Wood Products in Shasta and Siskiyou Counties, California” was conducted by John Talberth, Ph.D., senior economist for the Center for Sustainable Economy, an environmental economics think tank based in Port Townsend, WA. According to Talberth, the omission of logging industry GHG emissions blows a “gaping hole” in California’s reputation as a forerunner in the fight against climate change.
“If California wants to preserve its reputation as a climate leader, it is essential for Gov. Newsom and other elected officials to reject false narratives that allow Big Timber to overrun the state’s forestlands with intensive logging activities that generate significant greenhouse gas emissions while making the land more susceptible to fire, floods, and heat waves,” Talberth said.
The report was commissioned by the Battle Creek Alliance, the Manton-based environmental nonprofit directed by Marily Woodhouse that is dedicated to protecting the public trust resources of water, air, soil and wildlife throughout the inland counties of northern California.
The Battle Creek Watershed in the 1990s before excessive clearcutting began. Blue line is Digger Creek, the boundary between Tehama and Shasta Counties.
The Battle Creek Watershed in 2023. Both photos courtesy of Battle Creek Alliance.
For the past 20 years, Woodhouse’s primary focus has been on the Battle Creek watershed, just west of Lassen Park in Shasta and Tehama Counties. The area is a patchwork quilt of 20-acre clearcuts, tree plantations, logging roads and burn scars from wildfires. Woodhouse has learned that no other industry has been granted the environmental leeway enjoyed by industrial logging in California.
“The timber industry has long operated outside the regulations governing other sectors, worsening climate change in California’s timber counties,” Woodhouse said. “It’s time for state leaders to enact strong regulations to count and control emissions from logging. California must walk the talk as a climate leader.”
David Ledger, President of Shasta Environmental Alliance, which also supported the study, concurred with Talberth and Woodhouse.
“This report exposes the failure of California to regulate and account for greenhouse gas emissions, from tree felling to the final lumber product at the mill,” Ledger said. “Ignoring the emissions from logging operations weakens California’s efforts to address climate change.”
As Talberth points out at the beginning, California has embarked on an ambitious effort to reach carbon neutrality by 2045, the first major jurisdiction to do so. The plan includes dramatically reducing GHG emissions and increasing carbon sequestration from the atmosphere via forests, farmland and natural landscapes.
Natural forests that have not been developed or logged are indeed remarkable carbon sinks thanks to their ability to capture CO2 from the atmosphere and store it both above and below the ground, for centuries if left undisturbed. Talberth calls this “catch and store.”
In contrast, he labels modern industrial logging and wood products industry “catch and release” because it emits far more greenhouse gasses than it captures.
A clearcut up close. Courtesy of Battle Creek Alliance.
“Trees are half carbon by weight, and when they are cut down and processed into two by fours, paper products, or wood pellets, the majority of this biogenic carbon is released into the atmosphere over time, most of it during the first few years after logging,” Talberth writes.
“Forests logged to make way for subdivisions, highways, infrastructure or commercial development eliminate carbon sequestration permanently, while logging roads do the same as long as they are left open and kept clear of vegetation,” he continues. “In addition, industrial logging activities generate significant fossil fuel related GHGs associated with construction of logging roads, operation of logging equipment, fertilizer and pesticide applications, milling and manufacturing, transport of logs and end use products, and disposal of wood products in landfills.”
These climate consequences are well known to state officials, Talberth insists. But rather than hold industrial forestland owners, logging and log hauling operators, mills and manufacturing facilities, wholesale and retail sellers of wood, and wood waste disposal outfits accountable for their GHG emissions, state regulators have adopted “unwarranted GHG accounting assumptions” in order to declare industrial logging carbon neutral when it’s clearly not.
The state did this by combining all the timber industry operations named in the above paragraph into a single “forests” sector instead of a “logging and wood products” sector. It then compares the carbon removed by logging to the carbon stored in plantation forests that are not logged (yet). Since the latter amount generally exceeds the former, the state fictitiously declares the forests sector to be a carbon sink. Therefore, there’s no need to track the forest industry’s overall GHG emissions because they’re supposedly less than zero.
It’s the only economic sector in the state’s GHG framework that is treated this way. Talberth aims to change that.
“The goal of this research is to present an accounting system that can be used reliably to monitor and eventually regulate such emissions through market-based or regulatory mechanisms,” he writes.
For the study, Talberth developed an accounting framework using peer reviewed methods to develop a “ tally of GHG emissions from logging in Shasta and Siskiyou counties that could be suitable as a basis for a forest carbon tax and reward program implemented at the state or county level.”
In lay terms, the total annual GHGs produced is calculated by determining the annual amount of CO2 equivalent removed from forests by logging, then subtracting the amount of removed CO2 equivalent that is stored in harvested wood products and landfills at 100 years. Next add the CO2 equivalent released from the decay and combustion of logging residuals, the foregone sequestration associated with logging roads and clearcut units, the annual GHG emissions associated with silviculture activities, the average GHG emissions associated with soil losses and degradation and the annual GHS emissions associated with transportation of logs to mills and processing at mills.
That’s how Talberth calculated the logging industry in Shasta and Siskiyou Counties emits 4 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent per year, equal to the annual emissions of 883,000 gas-powered passenger vehicles, with climate damages to the tune $487 million to $1.4 billion per year.
Clearcutting activity around Mount Shasta, the area of the study.
A News Café asked Talberth how this accounting system might be integrated into market-based or regulatory mechanisms. He provided three possible scenarios. The first is based on the state’s present cap-and-trade carbon market. Talberth writes:
“The state (or individual counties) establishes a logging and wood products sector and subjects it to GHG reporting requirements, caps its emissions at current levels and phases in a 25 percent (or whatever figure makes sense) reduction by 2050 using the same system of declining allowances used now to regulate fossil fuel emissions. Entities that reduce their emissions lower than the annual compliance obligations get to sell their ‘excess’ emissions reductions to other entities who cannot achieve those reductions or need to increase their emissions for some reason. It would also allow landowners who choose not to log at all (even if they are entitled to and normally would) to sell their credits.”
The second scenario uses a forest carbon tax and reward system and might appeal to county officials obsessed with local control. Talberth writes:
“Siskiyou and/or Shasta counties establish a forest carbon tax and reward system because the state has done nothing to regulate logging and wood products emissions so far. Here is a link to the journal article describing such a program. The program puts a tax on the emissions from logging and wood products – in the case of my report, about 4 million metric tons CO2 per year and uses the funds to incentivize climate smart forest practices like long rotations, alternatives to clearcutting, and establishment of forest carbon reserves placed in public ownership. Forestland owners can avoid the tax by adopting climate smart forest management plans across their entire ownerships or choose to apply these plans to only a portion of their lands. Without any climate smart plans adopted, the counties could expect to collect the product of annual emissions (4 million metric tons CO2) times the current federal social cost of carbon ($51 per ton CO2) or $204 million per year. That is enough to buy a lot of land back into public ownership and protected status.”
The third scenario uses a carbon tax to discourage development and logging of forests. Talberth writes:
“The tax would apply equally to forestland owners that log to generate wood products, or owners that log to clear the land for development. If a forestland owner in Shasta or Siskiyou counties sold their land to developers, they could expect to incur a tax on the carbon emitted from the trees cut down as well as the carbon that would have been captured on the developed land if it was left in natural condition for the next 100 years. That potential tax burden was estimated to be about $10,000 per acre (in Maine) in our paper, an amount that would be added to development permit fees and, as above, used to finance climate smart (or generally smart growth) practices. The developer would also be incentivized to adopt climate smart practices , green rooftops, pervious pavement, and protected open space by getting credit for the GHG reductions associated with them.”
Talberth’s study is a sobering reminder that California’s ambitious goal to become carbon neutral is by no means a sure thing. It’s somewhat shocking to learn the state doesn’t regulate the GHG emissions of the timber industry, especially considering the importance of preserving forests as carbon sinks that complement the efforts to reduce fossil fuel emissions. A Cal Matters article earlier this year concluded California won’t make its 2030 climate goals unless it triples its rate of GHG reduction.
Despite its importance, the study, released last month, has so far fallen on deaf ears. Marily Woodhouse, the director of Battle Creek Alliance has sent the study for comment to Gov. Gavin Newsom, Attorney General Rob Bonta, Sen. Alex Padilla, state Sen. Brian Dahle, California Natural Resources Agency Secretary Wade Crowfoot, Cal Fire Director Joe Tyler and the California Board of Forestry and Fire Protection.
With the exception of an off-point response from Sen. Padilla, it’s been crickets.
Meanwhile, A News Café made repeated efforts to contact Anderson-based Sierra Pacific Industries, the second largest lumber producer in the country, for comment on the study. With a net worth of $6 billion, long-term CEO A.A. “Red” Emmerson is the richest man in Shasta County and the Emerson family are the largest landowners in the United States.
Sierra Pacific declined to comment.
