President
Trump's EPA Says Burning Wood is Carbon Neutral, Like Wind and Solar
Energy
24
April, 2018
The
awkwardly named Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has declared
that burning wood is carbon neutral. In the eyes of the Trump regime,
burning wood for energy is now just as environmentally friendly as
wind and solar power, despite the fact that burning biomass releases
greenhouse gases.
“Today’s
announcement grants America’s foresters much-needed certainty and
clarity with respect to the carbon neutrality of forest biomass,”
said EPA Administrator, and scandal-plagued swamp creature, Scott
Pruitt in a statement released yesterday.
Rather
than calling it a new policy, the EPA is trying to position it as a
“clarification” while pretending that it’s been the agency’s
policy the entire time. But the Obama administration was opposed to
calling the practice carbon neutral.
“Managed
forests improve air and water quality, while creating valuable jobs
and thousands of products that improve our daily lives,” Pruitt
continued. “This is environmental stewardship in action.”
This
might come as a shock, but many scientists think that burning biomass
will make climate change worse within our lifetimes.
So
how can Pruitt and the Trump regime declare this move to be
environmentally sound? There’s a way to argue that burning biomass
is carbon neutral if you look at the calculations on a long term
scale while ignoring the immediate dangers. And even the European
Union has embraced this way of thinking by making sawdust into wood
pellets for burning to replace coal power plants.
Photo:
File photo of wood pellets burned for energy in Germany (Getty)
The
only scientific argument for claiming that burning wood is carbon
neutral depends almost exclusively on looking at it from a 100-year
scale. To put it simply, the argument is that after you burn trees
for energy, new trees can simply be regrown in their place. But when
you look at it on a five, ten, or 20-year scale, the picture is much
bleaker.
“If
we melt Arctic ice in the next 20 years, that’s not going to come
back,” William Schlesinger, a biogeochemist who sits on the EPA’s
Science Advisory Board told Science magazine last year.
If
you do the math in isolation on a short-term scale, sure, trees are
renewable. But as Schlesinger points out, we don’t have the luxury
of doing our calculations for 100 years into the future. If we turn
our planet into Waterworld, we can’t get those polar ice caps back.
But
private industry and lobbyists are very happy with the EPA’s
announcement.
“Recognizing
that forest biomass in the US provides a carbon neutral source of
renewable energy will encourage landowners to replant trees to keep
our forests healthy and intact and provide good paying jobs well into
the future,” said CEO of National Alliance of Forest Owners Dave
Tenny, said in the EPA’s own statement.
Again,
replanting trees might be fine if you ignore the immediate impacts.
But we don’t have that kind of time. Even managers for public
utilities in the South are praising the move by the Trump regime.
“This
puts a Georgia resource on par with wind and solar and that’s good
news for our state,” Tim Echols, Vice Chair of the Georgia Public
Service Commission, told a talk radio station in Atlanta.
“As
we enter into a time in the US, I think in the next decade, when
there will be a price on carbon, this will help the forest industry
be competitive.”
The
EPA’s decision may make the forest industry more “competitive.”
But at what cost? The cost of our children and grandchildren, no
doubt. But at least the forest industry can make a few more bucks.
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