The latest plan from one of the world’s most annoying billionaires is to cut down trees and bury them.
It’s part of the “thinning” controversy.
The subject? Forest management.
In the old days, human beings cleared forests or kept forests and harvested from them (for firewood, fungi, and fauna) on an ongoing basis. And, periodically, nature would swing around and forests would burn — a story as old as the hills, forest fires being part of the natural cycle.
But when humans use forests for all sorts of things, but most especially harvesting building material (lumber), we have to take some control of the natural cycles. Forest thinning — cutting and removing some trees and leaving the rest — is a key silvicultural practice.
Some environmentalists have objected to this practice on the grounds that Nature Is Good and Sacred, with silviculturalists generally arguing that without thinning, forests become tinder-boxes, ripe for runaway fires in which forests are destroyed, value is lost, and people die.
A recent article in The Epoch Times covers some of this. I am not qualified to adjudicate the ecological disagreements. But Bill Gates pushing the thinning of forests not as a means of harvesting lumber or as a means of reducing forest fires, but as a way of sequestering carbon, seems loopy: “Through his foundation Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Mr. Gates is a part of the $6.6 million seed investor pool backing Kodama Systems in its proposal to remove trees in California’s fire-challenged woodlands and bury them in Nevada to sequester carbon dioxide (CO2).”
I would prefer sequestering that carbon in housing, which we need more of, not less.
But Gates has his eyes on atmospheric CO2 levels, not helping the poor in America.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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5 replies on “Bill Gates Wants to Bury Trees”
Wood is a sink for atmospheric carbon, so long as the wood remains wood and/or is sequestered in some way.
Rather simple ways of sequestering wood, include painting, varnishing, shellacking, oiling, and waxing. Wood can also be treated with deeply penetrating preservatives. These are things that we do with utilitarian or decorative objects made of wood.
Gates proposes instead to sequester wood in a way that treats it as if it is not a good, but a hazardous waste. He makes this proposal even though we not long ago watched an explosion in the price of wood as a commodity.
And he makes this proposal though the principal sponsors of the theory of anthropogenic global climate change have for decades been avoiding collection an analysis of evidence that goes right to the heart of the theory.
Our ruling class and those who mistake themselves for its members look for ever new ways to take the liberty and reduce the material well-being of the rest of us. We are to be the neo-serfs of a neo-feudalism.
Just today I read about the ‘ring of fire’ in northern Ontario, Canada. It’s said to hold a mother lode of rare minerals that can be used to make EV batteries. Just one problem: it’s buried under a network of peat bogs. Digging up the bogs to mine the EV minerals would result in a huge CO2 release. It’s said the bogs sequester more carbon per square foot than even the Amazon rain forest. What choice would Gates make in this instance? Release naturally sequestered carbon to reach the rare earth minerals or let it be?
Trees absorb CO2. Forests support wildlife. Why wouldn’t Gates want to plant more trees? Don’t they also help to prevent mudslides in heavy rain?
On a show about the Alaskan frontier, they commented that burning firewood is carbon neutral. If you pick a standing dead tree or a recently fallen tree it’s going to rot anyway releasing its carbon into the atmosphere. When we burn wood for heat it similarly releases the exact same amount of carbon into the atmosphere. Wood is not a fossil fuel. I suspect there’s more to Mr Gates’s project but I’m not going to go there. Bore a beetles killed all the aspen trees in southern Alaska leaving them with an abundance of standing dead trees. You can heat an entire house with three cords of wood which is approximately two good sized trees. Shaker furniture and beautiful paneling aside, please don’t bury the wood in Nevada!
Maybe we should sequester Bill Gates and his ilk.
What’s ironic about the current carbon dioxide hysteria is that throughout most of the Earth’s history, it was much higher than now, according to ice core samples. The small addition humans have contributed is already resulting in an increased greening of the planet. It is simply false to state that reducing CO2 will help the world.