In the past few months, we’ve seen incredible momentum in the United States for our leaders to take bold, concrete action on climate change and environmental justice. From the halls of Congress to dinner tables and schools across the country, there is growing energy and momentum to address the climate crisis.
Whether it’s the movement calling for a Green New Deal, youth striking for climate around the world, or Southern justice leaders bringing the message of Justice First to DC, climate action is finally getting the national attention that its urgency demands.
Now, it is more important than ever to educate and mobilize organizations, individuals, and decision-makers about what it means to be a real climate leader.
Simply put, to avoid a climate disaster we need to stop forest destruction and prioritize forest protection. For Dogwood Alliance activists, this is what we want to hit home with our policymakers day in and day out.
At a time when we should be protecting forests, the US is cutting down our own forests at one of the highest rates in the world. In fact, right here in the Southern US, our forests are logged and degraded at a rate four times higher than that of South American rainforests.Keeping forest carbon in the ground is as important as keeping fossil fuel carbon in the ground.
To make this a reality, last year Stand4Forests launched with the support of over 200 organizations, scientists, and elected officials with a bold vision for forest protection in the US — and we continue to grow every day.
Earlier this year, Dogwood Alliance traveled to Washington, DC with the Justice First Campaign to bring our shared vision of forest protection, clean energy, and climate justice to the halls of Congress. We put the Stand4Forests platform in the hands of several congressional offices — climate leaders who want to see ambitious climate legislation on the federal level. Based on the best scientific evidence, any comprehensive climate action plan needs to protect our forests as well as tackle the alarming rate of forest destruction currently happening in the US.
Dogwood Alliance’s Rita Frost, Danna Smith, and Rachel Weber in front of the Capitol along with Carina Daniels, Co-Founder of Story & Reach
I live in Congressman David Price’s district, and today, I called his office and asked him to be a Stand4Forests champion. I’m asking everyone I know and everyone reading this to join me in calling your Representative and Senators today.
By joining the growing list of supporters, policymakers who endorse the Stand4Forests platform will be taking a stand for principles anyone can get behind: clean air and water, protection from flooding and storms, the green economy, biodiversity, and the charge to solve the climate crisis.
Every call makes a difference. We know that lawmakers hear from the forest products industry and their friends every day. Profit-driven groups and companies like Enviva, the world’s largest wood pellet manufacturer, benefit from the status quo of the forest products industry. These industry players want policymakers and the public to believe that we can log our way out of climate change. In fact, just the other day, forest industry sweetheart, Arkansas Representative Bruce Westerman, tried to win over The Hill’s readers with the faulty logic that if you want to save a tree, you should… cut down a tree?
Every day of the year, Dogwood Alliance celebrates and champions our forests. We fight for the clean air and water they provide, the beauty they share, and the protection they give us from flooding and storms. More than ever, we fight for forests because they are essential to solving the climate crisis.
On March 21st each year, the International Day of Forests gives us a reason to celebrate a little louder. Happy International Day of Forests!
If you haven’t already, be sure to sign and share the Stand4Forests pledge!
Join the conversation on social media with the hashtags #Stand4Forests and #IntlForestDay.
A new version of BURNED: Are Trees the New Coal — the hard-hitting documentary that exposes the truth about the biomass industry — has just made its debut on Link TV and is available for international free streaming!
This powerful film probes the policy loopholes, huge subsidies, and blatant greenwashing of the biomass electric power industry.
Here in the US South, our forests are disturbed at a rate four times higher than South American rainforests. Dogwood Alliance has documented the increased pressure that the biomass industry has put on this heavily logged landscape. Every year, tens of thousands of acres of Southern forests are cut down, turned into wood pellets, and shipped overseas by Enviva, the world’s largest wood pellet manufacturer, to be burned for electricity.
BURNED has had a profound impact on Dogwood Alliance’s work and getting the message out. Adam Colette, Dogwood Alliance’s Program Director, says:
“I’ve been following Enviva and the wood pellet industry for years, and I’ve seen the devastation first hand. This documentary has allowed the public and policymakers to join me on Dogwood Alliance’s investigations of shocking clearcuts, see the destruction for themselves, and ask the question: is this what clean energy looks like?”
Adam Colette at the site of a devastating wetland clearcut, where Enviva was sourcing for one of their North Carolina facilities. Watch the documentary for footage of this 2015 investigation.
BURNED: Are Trees the New Coal will be available for streaming for four months, through July 18th. Watch how a dedicated group of forest activists, ecologists, carbon scientists, and concerned citizens fight to establish the enormous value of our forests, protect their communities, debunk this false solution to climate change, and alter energy policy both in the US and abroad. Be sure to watch and share!
Wetland forests in the US are our communities’ best protection from the worst impacts of climate change like increased flooding, drought, and degradation of our water quality. But the Trump Administration wants to eliminate protections for wetland forests, streams, and other wetland areas.
Under this new proposed rule, many wetland forests like floodplain forests and bottomland hardwoods would no longer be protected from destruction. The new rule would mean that any wetland forest with a road, levee, or berm that disrupts its connection to other waterways would no longer be protected. Over half of the nation’s wetlands would be vulnerable to destruction and pollution if the Trump Administration has its way. Read on to find out more about the legislation in question: the Clean Water Act.
The Clean Water Act, passed in 1972, is one of the most influential pieces of environmental legislation in the United States. The Clean Water Act is the primary federal law controlling and preventing water pollution. It recognizes the power and responsibility of state governments in preventing pollution while also giving the federal government authority to regulate “point” pollution, like pollution from sewage treatment and industrial facilities. Perhaps most importantly, the Clean Water Act protects wetlands in the US that would otherwise be left vulnerable to pollution and destruction.
Unfortunately, some of the language in the Clean Water Act has been somewhat unclear. In particular, the scope of the nation’s waters has been murky at times and subject to several lawsuits. Two court cases in particular, SWANCC vs. US ACE and Rapanos vs. US, demonstrated the need to clarify which wetlands fall under the Clean Water Act’s purview.
In 2015, the Obama Administration, through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and US Army Corps. of Engineers (ACE) attempted to clarify the scope of the Clean Water Act by proposing the “Clean Water Rule” that clarifies which wetlands are subject to the federal legislation and which are not. This rule was crafted by both the EPA and ACE as they “conducted peer-reviewed hydrological studies, interagency reviews, and economic analyses before publishing a formal proposed rule on April 21, 2014.”
The Clean Water Rule has been demonized by industrial polluters, big business, big agriculture, and industrial forestry since its inception. These industries want to have the right to pollute, destroy, and develop wetlands when it is convenient for them, regardless of the impacts that they will have on surrounding communities.
After President Trump came into office, Scott Pruitt and the EPA suspended the implementation of the Clean Water Rule in January 2018. However, it was reinstated in August of 2018 when a federal district court judge decided that the Trump Administration had overstepped its bounds by not taking public comment before acting. As a result, the Clean Water Rule is the law of the land — but the Trump Administration wants to change that.
As you know, wetland forests in the US are our communities’ best protection from the worst impacts of climate change like increased flooding, drought, and degradation of our water quality. The Trump Administration is now attempting to eliminate Clean Water Act protections for wetland forests, streams, and other wetland areas by “revising” the Clean Water Rule. The proposal limits Clean Water Act protections to wetlands with a “continuous surface connection” to larger lakes, streams, or rivers. In addition, it removes federal protections for rain and snow dependent streams. This Trump Administration would mean, by the EPA’s own estimates, that over half of the nation’s currently protected wetlands will become vulnerable once again.
Under this new rule, many wetland forests like floodplain forests and bottomland hardwoods would no longer be protected from destruction. The new rule would mean that any wetland forest with a road, levee, or berm that disrupts its connection to other waterways would no longer be protected by the Clean Water Act. Additionally, scientists believe that this rule revision would have significant impacts on water resources (like clean drinking water) in the US.
All told, the Trump Administration’s dangerous proposal would remove safeguards for more than half of America’s wetlands, leaving them open to destruction from logging, development, and pollution. Drinking water and flood protection for millions of Americans would be at risk. We will not let that happen.
We only have a short window to show our support for the nation’s wetland forests. Please, speak up for our wetland forests by submitting your public comments to the US EPA.
Last year the Stand4Forests movement was launched, laying out a bold vision for forest protection in the US endorsed by organizations, elected officials, and scientists from around the country. The Stand4Forests movement calls for a new vision of forest protection.
It’s been co-sponsored by at least 6 other State Senators and when the 2019-2020 legislative session begins again, we could see SR 108 going to a vote! That means that now – this year – is the time to call on all of our GA Senators to become forest champions.
The climate crisis is urgent — communities, the planet, and our very existence are threatened. The state of Georgia is no exception. Climate science shows that Southeastern US cities, including those in Georgia, are particularly vulnerable to climate change, with major expected impacts to infrastructure and human health.
But at a time when we should be protecting forests, the US is cutting down our own forests at one of the highest rates in the world, creating a climate emergency.
Georgia is one of the states hardest hit by industrial logging and the expansion of the wood pellet industry. The Georgia Biomass facility, outside of Waycross, is one of the largest wood pellet plants in the world. This pellet industry typically uses whole trees and is increasing carbon emissions and polluting communities. Additionally, wood pellet plants are typically located in environmental justice communities already burdened with other polluting industries.
When left standing, forests provide billions in economic value to our state and local communities. Georgia’s forests, when protected, can buffer communities from the damage caused by extreme weather events, reduce costs of waste and water treatment, provide habitat for pollinators, and support an already robust wildlife-related recreation economy.
We now must ask ourselves – how will we protect our valuable forests? What can we gain if we do? And what do we have to lose if we do not protect our forests?
By joining the growing list of supporters, Georgia policymakers who endorse the Stand4Forests platform will be taking a stand for principles any American can get behind: clean air and water, protection from flooding and storms, jobs in the growing green economy, biodiversity, and the charge to solve the climate crisis.
What makes a forest a forest? This simple question becomes much more complicated, depending on who you ask. Thankfully, Dr. Dominick DellaSala, President and Chief Scientist of the Geos Institute, helps us explore this question and settle the debate in a chapter on “Fake” vs “Real” forests that will be published in The World’s Biomes, scheduled to be released in 2020. Topics that will be explored include:
Industry classifies forests as “an area at minimum 120 ft wide, 1 acre minimum wide, with at least 10% forest cover.” Does that sound like a forest to you?
The US Forest Service is an arm of the USDA. The department of agriculture’s focus is growing crops. Stated plainly, that means the Forest Service sees trees as crops. This typically means tree plantations are planted in dense rows like corn to be thinned, sprayed with chemicals, and fertilized for the fastest growing cycle for logging and the highest “return on investment.”
In the second half of the 20th century, the United States paid landowners to plant pine instead of allowing natural forests to regrow. We’ve lost 33 million acres of natural forest and increased pine plantations by 40 million acres in the US South. Now, we have more plantations and less true natural forests than ever before.
Plantation forests, aka “fake” forests, are prone to intense forest fires, are climate polluters, and are biologically impoverished ecosystems.
Logging real forests and converting them to fake ones contributes more carbon dioxide pollution than any other source of emissions from forests. When we look closely at the data, logging accounts for 85% of emissions from US forests, more than 5x the emissions from fire, wind, insects, and tree mortality combined. Even more, planting trees or entombing wood in buildings does not compensate for carbon held by real forests for centuries.
To an ecologist, a forest is a place where the sum of the ecosystem parts is greater than the whole. In contrast to industry, the “goal” of a forest to an ecologist is to support and sustain life.
Natural forests have many species of trees, plants and herbs, insects, animals, fungi and microbes that rely on each other to survive. They provide the benefits we as humans rely on: fresh water, clean air, food, climate regulation, and habitat. They are our place to rest, experience the wonder of the natural world, and a place for recreation. Scientists refer to this as “ecological integrity.” And it’s simple – real forests have the highest integrity, whereas fake ones have none. Unfortunately, real forests are declining globally as fake forests replace them via an unmitigated, massive eco-engineering of the planet’s ecosystems, and this holds true in the United States.
Memories are not made in plantations. They are made by bird watching, hunting, playing a game of “tag” in real forests.
To Dr. DellaSala, real forests are superior to their fake counterparts in every aspect. They are complex structurally from the penthouse (forest canopy) to the basement (soils). Natural forests are connected by an Avatar-like sub-highway of root masses and fungal mats that transfer vital soil nutrients and moisture to the roots of trees. Their food-webs have interlocking strands that join squirrel to pine cone and squirrel to owl, deer to grass and deer to mountain lion, and slugs to rotten logs, and so on.
Real forests also are nature’s climate solutions, serving as enormous air filters and giant cooling towers, increasingly vital in a rapidly warming and drying world and for flood protection in a wetter one. They are the best “green infrastructure” we have. Given the climate crisis, we know that we need to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide being emitted into the atmosphere immediately and additionally sequester more carbon dioxide from the air. Where can we turn? Real, natural forests.
If we stop deforestation, protect and restore degraded forests, and expand natural forests, we could reduce annual emissions by 75% in the next 50 years.
If we also phase out fossil fuels, we can meet the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement and avoid catastrophic climate change. One thing is certain: we cannot solve the climate crisis without placing a premium on protection of natural forests while restoring and sustainably managing other forests. Forests are one of the best ways we have to keep carbon out of the atmosphere, especially older, complex forests, because each year they absorb carbon and store it in their roots, leaves, and wood.
We need to improve, restore, and protect our natural forests.
At the end of the day, forests are more than wood. If we continue to grow plantations instead of forests, we will lose out on all that natural forests provide. Standing forests are our best defense against climate change. Forests support us in ways that we cannot live without. But currently, our economic and political system favors forest destruction over forest protection. Together, we can make a change.
I met Luke Cannon near Bent Creek for our Forest Friday hike. Luke has over 20 years experience as a naturalist, teacher, and student and is the founder of Astounding Earth.
There was a notable chill in the air, but the sun was out, and it was a beautiful day for a hike. Bent Creek is often busy with mountain bikers, hikers, and people walking their dogs, but we didn’t see anyone else on the trail. We took a winding path across a small creek and up a small hill towards the lake. The trees around Bent Creek have vines that spiral elegantly up their narrow trunks. There’s an abundance of sourwoods there, and the ground still had a thick blanket of fallen leaves that crunched under us as we walked.
Luke Cannon discovered early on that, “wild spaces really calmed the storms in me.”
The first one is a man named Ricardo Sierra who runs a program in New York state called Hawk Circle. Luke spent a month with him in the woods when he was fourteen. During that month, Ricardo taught Luke the names and identities of many plants and showed him which ones were edible.
Luke’s other mentor, Frank Cook, was an ethnobotanist, activist, and educator. He taught many classes on food as medicine and believed people should eat one wild thing a day. Luke said:
“I spent more than a decade trying to spend as much time as possible with Frank Cook. We shared time learning about plants as food and as medicine, but also as friends, all over much of the United States.”
Luke spent a number of years doing social work in the inner-city of Washington, DC, but he wanted to be able reach and help people in a more profound way.
Luke said:
“All I could see first-hand was that my life was greatly changed by my experience in the woods and by developing a deeper relationship with the natural world. I wanted to see how I could potentially facilitate that for other people.”
Luke went back to his beginnings and reconnected with his first mentor, Ricardo Sierra to deepen his connection and knowledge of the wild plant world.
We paused here in the conversation because we found a patch of vibrant orange polypore mushrooms. Luke pulled out a pocket magnifying glass so I could take a deeper look at all the details. Polypore mushrooms, like the name would imply, have tubes or pores on their underside instead of gills. Not all polypores are closely related.
“Astounding Earth is my attempt at helping to make up for what I see as a huge lack in environmental education and eco-literacy in our culture. I open up spaces for people to feel connected. One of the things I love about teaching wild edibles is it really gives people a personal way to experience a plant, mushroom or even a lichen, because once you harvest, touch, smell and taste something, you make a deeper connection with it. You’re using a lot more senses than just your eyes to examine and ‘know’ something.”
In March, Luke will be teaching a class on Wild Edibles at the Organic Grower’s School.
I’m Lucia Ibarra, the Wetland Wanderer! I’ve been traveling all across the South visiting wetland forests.
I’ve been so lucky to encounter incredible plants and critters and to meet some amazing people who are doing the work of protecting our wetlands.
I’m excited to share with you my second Wetland Wanderer Episode! Let’s go on an adventure to Francis Beidler Forest in the beautiful state of South Carolina.
Our wetlands are so incredibly important. Wetland forests are key to helping us endure climate change – Wetlands help absorb and store carbon, and they reduce flooding and drought. Protecting wetlands is an investment that will help us build a clean energy future that rewards our planet and all life on Earth.
Stayed tuned for more Wetland Wanderer videos. I’ll be in touch soon to share Wetland Wanderer Episode #3 with you!
Until then, I’ll see you in the Wetlands!On February 7, 2019, Drax Power Station in the UK announced it captured its “first carbon dioxide” using “C-Capture technology” in their bioenergy carbon capture and storage (BECCS) pilot. It sounds great in theory, but in the end it’s nothing more than greenwashing from the world’s largest forest burning utility company.
This pilot project perfectly shows how BECCS projects are ineffective, costly, detract from real solutions, and allow dirty polluters to continuously harm communities without actually alleviating the climate crisis. The bottom line: Drax’s pilot program shows us that BECCS projects, like the one they began running a week ago, do nothing to address the root cause of climate change and can’t stand up to the carbon-sequestering power of protecting natural forests.
Wood pellet biomass is oftentimes sourced from clearcut bottomland hardwood forests, like this one, in the Southern U.S.
At the Drax Power Station, 4 of its 6 generators are powered by wood pellet biomass mostly coming from the Southern United States. The carbon-rich bottomland hardwood forests that the company sources from are clearcut to be manufactured into wood pellets and shipped across the ocean to be burned at this power station, all in the name of green energy and claimed as the world’s largest decarbonization project.
All of this greenwashing is a false solution to climate change, and it’s essentially paid for by the British government and its taxpayers, which hands out approximately 2 million pounds (over $2.5 million US dollars) a day to Drax in “renewable energy subsidies.” According to a study by the UK Government in 2014:
Working with a company called C-Capture, Drax is using a chemical to capture the C02 from its biomass flue gasses. It’s in the trial stage at the power station, and Drax spent 400,000 British pounds ($516,800) in order to capture a meager 1 tonne of C02 a day this year. If the trial proves 100% successful, they will capture 365 tonnes a year. Meanwhile, Drax’s CO2 stack emissions from biomass burning were 11.77 million tonnes in 2017.
While some of the scenarios that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) use for the basis of their Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius assume the use of such negative emissions technology projects, such as Drax’s, they expressly caution over-reliance on BECCS as a mitigation or carbon removal strategy.
As Drax’s pilot is showing right now, there will be no livable planet as these projects are ineffective at scale, cost inordinate amounts of money that need to be used elsewhere, and serve to only provide a lifeline to a declining coal industry while delaying the energy transition needed.
Natural forests provide critical habitat to species like the black bear. Forests must be protected, restored, and allowed to expand in the U.S.
Drax’s BECCS project proves what the environmental justice community has been saying for years now – false solutions and techno-fixes are not we need to keep our communities safe, our air clean, or improve our local economies and quality of life. To maximize carbon storage, we must prioritize the protection of our forests, as noted by the over 200 elected officials, conservation and justice organizations who signed the Stand4Forests platform in 2018.
Join the Dogwood Alliance crew to celebrate the release of Elderberry Wise at Urban Orchard‘s downtown location on Tuesday, February 19th. Meet fellow forest lovers and taste this delicious cider infused with local elderberries.
In support of the forests that give us so much, Urban Orchard is donating $1 to Dogwood Alliance for each pint of Elderberry Wise sold until it runs out! Ranked as the #1 place to drink cider in America in 2017 by Food & Wine Magazine, Urban Orchard Cider Company, a family-owned, local business, prides itself on lovingly crafted cider made from locally grown apples (and elderberries!).
Elderberries are the rich purple-black fruit of elder trees (Sambucus nigra). Elder trees themselves are found here in North American and in Europe as well, although they shouldn’t be confused with the American Elder (Sambucus canadensis). Only growing to a height of about 30ft (although legend has it that they used to grow much larger), elder thrives in wild places. It’s said that propagating an elder is as easy as breaking off a twig and putting it in the ground. Sounds like magic to me!
Elder is regarded as a sacred tree to many North American tribal nations as well as to indigenous, nature-based traditions in Europe. While it heals physically (elderberries are known as a powerful immune boosters and help relieve coughs and sore throats), it’s also considered a very powerful spiritual tree, guarding the gates of the Faery Realm, and not to be trifled with (like Dogwood Alliance!).
In fact, the tree is so respected that many Europeans today still doff or touch their caps when passing by an elder, in deference to the “Grandmother” tree. And, if you cut one down, you should ask her permission three times before doing so. Legend has it that bad things could happen otherwise!
So where does its name come from? It is widely held that “Eld” came from “Aeld,” an old Anglo-Saxon word meaning fire. The tree’s association with fire came from the hollowing out of its thinner branches, which were blown through to increase the flames. In Celtic traditions, Elder is also the 15th “few”, or letter, of the Ogham (an old alphabet based on tree-types), called “Ruis,” and it has been thought that each elder tree has a bit of the Queen of the Faeries in it.
From Karen Cater’s “Ogham Sketch Book” available from Hedingham Fair
If all this isn’t enough to convince you that elder trees are magical, read a very old story about the role an elder tree played in creating the Rollright Stones of Oxfordshire.
Want in on the magic? Come enjoy this delicious, magical, and restorative cider infused with local, native elderberries while it lasts! Meet the fine and friendly folks of Dogwood Alliance and Urban Orchard and some of amazing fellow forest and cider lovers. We can’t wait to taste Elderberry Wise ourselves. No doubt we’ll get wiser with each sip!
North Carolina is a beautiful place to call home. From the mountains to the coast, our state boasts natural beauty that draws both residents and tourists to our state. We love our state, and we want to protect it for generations to come.
But now, North Carolinians are bearing the harsh impacts of a changing climate — increased hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and extreme temperatures are already affecting our state.
Governor Cooper stole our hearts with his ambitious climate goals. In 2018, Governor Cooper signed Executive Order No. 80, setting ambitious goals to reduce North Carolina’s greenhouse gas emissions.
In DC, Governor Cooper urged the federal government to preserve forests and act on climate — but meanwhile, the Cooper administration is green-lighting the destruction of forests and carbon-emitting projects in his own backyard.
Governor Cooper’s lip service to climate change and environmental justice has gone on long enough.
The environmental justice issues we face cannot be tackled in a silo. Combating climate change and implementing a just transition requires unity and solidarity. We are united in our opposition to false solutions that put more carbon in the atmosphere, threaten the health and quality of life of surrounding communities, and place the burden of clean up on residents.
Dogwood Alliance has been working with a number of organizations and coalitions, including the NC Climate, Jobs, and Justice Coalition (NCCJJ), under the umbrella of the People’s Climate Movement. The NCCJJ has committed to a joint vision of a just transition to a 100% renewable economy.
North Carolinians have been loud and clear in their demands: no expansion of the wood pellet industry, no more fossil fuel infrastructure, permanent remediation of coal ash contamination to be paid for in full by Duke Energy, and a transition to sustainable and regenerative agriculture.
We believe in a future with 100% clean, renewable energy, and beautiful, standing forests — ushered in by a just transition policy that creates quality jobs and and prioritizes the most impacted communities.
Specifically, we call for:
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