Even if we were to unwisely depend on the current unsustainable rate of short-rotation toxic clear-cutting on private forestlands — there’s not enough wood to feed proposed biomass plants, such as Seneca Sawmill Co.’s.

So why are there more and more proposed biomass plants across the United States?

According to the Oregon Forest Biomass Working Group, “The bulk of potentially available forest biomass is located on federal lands.”

Another pro-biomass group claims, “Obtaining a consistent supply of woody biomass from federal lands is one of the primary impediments to developing a biomass utilization sector.”

Prepare to have your fears and hopes exploited in the logging industry’s craftiest fairy tale to date: forest biomass. First the fear: “If we don’t log, the forests will burn up in wildfires and put our lives and homes at risk.” Then the hope: “The leftover waste will be used for green energy to fight climate change.”

The reality is forest biomass extraction would neither protect homes from wildfire nor give us green energy, but would act as a major obstacle to achieving either of those goals.

With climate change making our summers hotter and drier, forest-edge communities will probably be seeing more wildfires.

Luckily, as Jack Cohen — a scientist at the Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station — states, simple measures taken around the home and its immediate surroundings can almost eliminate the danger: “Given nonflammable roofs, Stanford Research Institute found a 95 percent (home) survival with (vegetation) clearance of 10 to 18 meters.”

In 2003, seemingly with this concern in mind, the Bush administration and Sen. Ron Wyden gave us the Healthy Forest Restoration Act, the primary stated purpose being “to reduce wildfire risk to communities.” Unfortunately, instead of focusing on projects in the vicinity of homes, a vast portion of HFRA funding has been spent on logging large, fire-resistant trees miles from the nearest town.

Yet thanks to Big Timber public relations campaigns and political distortions, many Americans have bought into the myth that logging stops wildfire and protects their homes from burning. (To counter this myth, attend ecologist George Wuerthner’s talk at 7 p.m. tonight at Harris Hall at 8th Avenue and Oak Street in Eugene.) But not only does HFRA not protect communities from wildfire, it gives the public a false sense of security, resulting in millions of homeowners ignoring fire-wise precautions, putting their homes and lives at risk.

Does that mean industry and agencies want homes to burn? Probably not. But their intent becomes clear when you learn HFRA’s second stated purpose: “to authorize grant programs to improve the commercial value of forest biomass.”

After using fear tactics to dupe Americans into supporting “fire risk reduction” logging, biomass proponents play to our hopes by assuring us that the resulting “waste” can be used to fight climate change, by turning it into a clean, green energy source.

Few deny the need to fund clean alternative energy sources — such as wind and solar — to wean us off our climate-disrupting dependence on waning fossil fuels. But logging for forest biomass is likely to make climate change worse. According to NASA, logging is “the second major way we increase atmospheric CO2,” while the May 2008 issue of Science Daily states, “the use of harvest residues for energy production decreases soil carbon stocks.”

Despite this evidence, forest biomass is getting the big bucks. Already, $50 million of the Forest Service’s stimulus payoff is going to “wood to energy grants to support the increased use of biomass.” Wyden also has a bill (S 536) that would allow federal forestlands to receive “renewable energy” subsidies, while Rep. Peter DeFazio is co-sponsoring a similar bill in the House (HR 1190).

Subsidizing forest biomass effectively takes money away from proven clean, green energy sources. According to EnergyJustice.net, “Biomass competes directly with wind, the cleanest and most promising power source. Eliminating biomass from renewable definitions means wind would get better funding.”

A rational response to climate change and peak oil involves investing in zero-emission energy sources such as wind and solar, while incentivizing greater efficiency measures (i.e., ground-breaking heat pump technologies) and conservation. Not squandering even more tax dollars to further bleed our already over-logged, climate-stabilizing forests.

Even if some Oregonians don’t think forest biomass is a bad idea — other than small-scale heating, it really is — the question they should be asking is this: Is it better than the alternatives it would be replacing: fire-wise homes and wind power?

We hope all Oregonians would agree the answer is no.

Josh Schlossberg and Shannon Wilson of Eugene are co-directors of Eco Advocates (eco-advocates.org).

 

Our future is with rail, not bigger roads

Eugene Register Guard Guest Viewpoint

Shannon Wilson

Published: June 26, 2008 12:00AM

                       

Contrary to U.S. Rep. DeFazio’s assertion in his Feb. 25 guest viewpoint, “Feds must lead the way on roads,” Congress and DeFazio should scrap obsolete highway and freeway expansion plans throughout the country. Our future as a civilization is now dependent on creating a new transportation system to survive the end of cheap petroleum and climate change. More and wider freeways and highways will only hasten economic and climatic chaos and disruption.

 

The only way to make this transition is through major expansion of light rail infrastructure and major upgrading of existing rail infrastructure as a viable alternative to the crumbing highway and freeway systems.

 

The planned “NAFTA freeways,” including Interstate 5, being promoted throughout the country by governors, Congress and the paving industry to accommodate millions of bigger and heavier trucks from Mexico and Canada must be stopped and scrapped. The trucking industry will soon collapse when diesel fuel is too expensive to run the trucks. This can’t be too far off with diesel now at nearly $5 a gallon. Surely we must repair and upgrade some of the most vital bridges around the country, but we must simultaneously create a rail-based public transportation system.

 

The cheap and easily drilled crude oil is diminishing, while worldwide demand for oil is surging. Soon the trucking and airline transportation systems are likely to fail, and if we do not prepare for that inevitability there will be chaos and major economic disruption because of our dangerous dependence on these two petroleum-based systems for our every need.

 

Light rail and heavy rail is the safest and most sustainable transportation on the planet. In the case of passenger transport, hybrid and other hyper-mileage cars can compete with light rail only when used as carpool vehicles. Passenger rail achieves between 50 to 80 passenger miles per gallon, and about 70 to 100 grams of carbon per passenger per mile. A 40-mpg auto can achieve between 40 or 80 (with 2 occupants) passenger miles per gallon. The death rate for all rail is 0.7 deaths per billion miles traveled, while death rate for motor vehicles is more than 10 deaths per billion miles traveled.

 

The mindset that more and wider freeways are going to reduce pollution as well as reduce global warming gases flies in the face of science, history and basic logic. This is the kind of logic that has gotten us to this dire point.

 

Fifty years of building highways and freeways for autos and trucking without any regard to urban planning, the impact on our climate, the effects on our health as well as the impact to our psychological well being as a society has led us to this over dependence on a failed system. Let us not forget that scientists have been talking about global warming since the 1960s.

 

California is working on building a high-speed rail system from Sacramento to Los Angeles. Many major urban areas in the country are turning towards high-speed light rail. Why is the Northwest not forging ahead with a new high-speed rail system from Eugene to Seattle?

 

The new Amtrak rail from New York to Washington, D.C., has seen an increase in ridership of 20 percent from 2006-07, for a total of 3.1 million passenger trips. The new Amtrak route from San Jose to Sacramento is up 15 percent from 2006-07 for a total of 1.4 million passenger trips.

 

As constituents we must convince DeFazio — chairman of the House Subcommittee on Highways and Transit — as well as all other Oregon lawmakers that we must have a high-speed light rail system in the Northwest as well as upgrades in rail infrastructure throughout the nation. These new rail systems will not only provide thousands of new jobs but it will keep the Northwest and the country economically competitive with other economic superpowers in Asia and Europe.

 

We must demand rail infrastructure now. We either transition off of our addiction to petroleum by going to rail now or surrender to a complete collapse of our whole economic system and way of life.

 

HHHH

 

Shannon Wilson of Eugene is chairman of the Many Rivers Group of the Sierra Club and co-director of Cascadia’s Ecosystem Advocates.