Two former Washington State Lands Commissioners, Jennifer Belcher and Peter Goldmark, are pushing an extreme proposal to shut down all timber harvests in Western Washington forests that are managed in trust by the state of Washington. They argue that halting harvests would help fight climate change.
That claim, however, is contradicted by science from the U.S. Forest Service, the University of Washington, and even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the U.N.’s climate agency. These scientists all note that sustainable forestry – harvesting timber and then re-planting trees – is much more effective at reducing atmospheric CO2 than letting trees grow, stagnate, die and then decay.
Read the full story from the Washington Policy Center's blog.