March 13, 2024 • 55 mins
We’re in beautiful British Columbia this week with STAND.Earth’s Richard Robertson and Tegan Hansen talking forestry on Canada’s west coast. In the first of two episodes, we talk to our guests about STAND’s forest campaigns in B.C. We cover the province’s approach to forest policy, how government and industry see B.C.’s forests as a tool in the renewable energy transition, and what the shocking carbon implications are.
Learn more about STAND.Earth on their website.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Janet Sumner (00:00):
Welcome to the ClearCut.
Hi, I'm Janet Sumner, ExecutiveDirector at Wildlands League.
Kaya Adleman (00:08):
And I'm Kaia Adelman, Carbon Manager at
Wildlands League.
Janet Sumner (00:14):
Wildlands League is a Canadian conservation
organization working onprotecting the natural world.
Kaya Adleman (00:21):
The ClearCut is bringing to you the much needed
conversation on Canadian forestmanagement and how we can better
protect one of Canada's mostimportant ecosystems, as our
forests are reaching a tippingpoint.
Janet Sumner (00:40):
Okay, so we can start on our introduction for
the episode that we had withRichard and Tegan from STAND.
It's a non-profit environmentalgroup that was started in
Canada I believe it was formerlycalled Forest Ethics and a good
friend of mine, support Berman,was one of the original
(01:01):
founders, if not the originalfounder, I can't remember the
exact history of it.
I think this is a reallyimportant conversation we're
having with Tegan and withRichard.
It's wide-ranging.
You're going to benefit fromthis.
We talk about biomass, we talkabout wildfires.
What else do we talk about?
Kaya Adleman (01:21):
We talk about the state of Talk about old growth
in BC.
Janet Sumner (01:25):
Old growth in BC, the way that pellets are shipped
around the globe.
We have a good conversationwith Tegan about her experience
at the Conference of the Parties, or what's commonly called the
COP.
It's a climate COP Conferenceof the Parties.
It's all the signatories to theClimate Agreement.
We also have a nature COP.
We had that here in Canada lastyear.
(01:47):
This is to talk about theclimate COP.
It's overlap with forestry andhow biomass is becoming an
engine for the energy transitionand what that means for
Canada's forests.
What were your other big thingsthat you're looking forward to
(02:08):
in this conversation, kaya?
Kaya Adleman (02:11):
I think when I started out at Wildlands League
and I was just getting my feetwet in the very complex,
many-issued story of forestmanagement in Canada, the one
piece of the puzzle that I thinkshocked me the most was the
biomass piece and the fact thatwe're We'll hear more about this
(02:35):
, but the idea that we'reshipping wood pellets around the
world and treating that as acarbon-neutral form of energy
was very mind-blowing to me.
I think you were saying, janet,too, when we were talking about
this many, many months ago,that this is something that we
tell people who aren'tentrenched in the issues, and
(02:57):
that's also the very what.
That's crazy.
I didn't know that.
I think, hopefully, that's alsoa takeaway that many of our
listeners will get from thisconversation as well.
Janet Sumner (03:10):
Yeah, this is.
I'm looking forward to it.
So, without further ado, we'regoing to open up the box that is
Tegan and Richard and have agood conversation with them and
learn a lot more about forestryin British Columbia and old
growth in biomass and the cup.
Okay, well, today we areblessed to have both Richard
(03:32):
Robertson and Tegan and I do nothave your last name, but you're
going to tell me what your lastname is in a minute and Kaya
and I are really pleased to behere ever having this
conversation with you.
I'm very glad that we could allget together at the same time
in the same place and have thisconversation.
So let me just start by askingeach of you to introduce a
(03:55):
little bit about yourself.
Tegan, can you start with yourlast name for me and tell me a
little bit about yourself andhow you came to be working with
stand, et cetera.
Tegan Hansen (04:07):
Thank you, Sure, thank you.
Yeah, my name is Tegan Hansen.
I'm the senior forestcampaigner at standearth and I
came to this work in aninteresting way.
I'm based currently most of thetime here on the Musqueam,
squamish and Sliwatu territoriesin Vancouver, british Columbia,
but I spent a lot of my time inthe area where I grew up, which
(04:31):
is the West Kootenays, sinaiaks, sinha and Sierch territories,
and actually what first inspiredme to be involved in this work
was learning how to snowshoe inKootenay Pass, tracking a herd
of mountain caribou with a localbiologist, and that was a
(04:51):
really profound experience, inpart because that herd at the
time was severely endangered andnow actually has disappeared.
They have been extirpated orgone locally extinct and in
through the course of kind of mylife I've worked in farm,
animal welfare, worked withfarmers on certifications, I've
(05:12):
done a lot of communityorganizing around climate
justice and I came to no standwhen I was organizing in
Vancouver against the TransMountain Pipeline and supporting
an Indigenous led resistanceproject called Kroquo Sautuk or
the Watch House, and got to knowthe folks that stand in the
work they did and saw this realopportunity to bridge all of
(05:34):
these worlds together, whichoften, I think in settler
society we hold a bit separatebetween wildlife and food and
land and human rights andclimate justice and all these
things which never felt thatseparate for me.
And so in this work that we doon forest, being able to bridge
those worlds and hold themtogether and I've been at Sands
(05:55):
now almost five years, which isa little terrifying to think
about and in that time I'vemostly focused my work on our
campaigns around old growth anddefending old growth forests
here in British Columbia.
Yeah, that's me.
Kaya Adleman (06:11):
Wow, thank you for that.
Janet Sumner (06:12):
That's pretty incredible.
So you started out by followinga herd of mountain caribou and
you ended up at stand.
What a beautiful story arc Okay.
Okay, that's great.
I mean it's terribly sad thatthat population has become
extirpated.
Obviously that's a very sadstory.
(06:35):
Richard, do you want to give usa bit of your journey, and I
can tell you're not from here.
Richard Robertson (06:42):
Yeah, people here tend to say, oh, you have
an accent, don't you?
And I'm like, yeah, I do, andso do you.
But yeah, I'm from the UKoriginally.
I moved here 10 years ago andwith my wife actually, my wife,
angeline, works for for stand aswell so we always end up seem
to follow each other through ourcareers in various
(07:05):
organizations.
So we actually met in Germany.
We worked for the Forest TudorCouncil in Bonn, and so I was
working, both working veryinternationally in forestry and,
yeah, I was working on nationalstandards in sort of 40 odd
countries, including Canada, andorganizing people to try and
(07:28):
try and align their foreststandards.
And so, yeah, I have a lot ofexperience in terms of
internationally where forestrylies and how things turn out
when forest industry comes alongand starts starts doing work in
the forest.
So, yeah, impacts on indigenouspeoples and on the environment
(07:50):
is a big thing for me, and so,yeah, it's been a great
privilege to come and live here.
I've lived here for 10 yearsNow.
We have two children.
They're quite young.
We live on the Sunshine Coastto live on the territories of
the Sheeshal nation and we wouldlive right on an inlet and the
Sheeshal inlet and it'sbeautiful out there and we see,
(08:13):
we see forestry going on aroundus and you can see the impacts,
but also there's some reallybeautiful forests still here to
explore and we love to goforaging, particularly for
mushrooms in the right season,and, yeah, just get the kids
outside and enjoying, yeah, theamazing bounty that is still,
(08:34):
fortunately, here and that'swhat I'm inspired by and excited
to help to further protect andenhance into the future.
Janet Sumner (08:46):
How did you come to work on forestry in in Europe
?
What was the path there?
You're six years old and youthought, oh, that's what I want
to do, or like, what was the?
Richard Robertson (08:58):
sort of yeah, I mean I come from now, I look
back at it and we live.
I lived and grew up in a verydegraded forest environment but
there was some very small.
There are still some very smallindigenous forests, native
forests in the UK and they'relike semi natural is how they're
referred to.
(09:19):
And so, yeah, where I lived andgrew up there was a river
valley and some, some, somenative forests left there.
I'd go walking with my dad onthe weekends.
We get out and I think that'swhy my passion started.
And then I studied geographyvery broad subject and I got
very interested in ecologythrough that and worked for a
(09:43):
wildlife trust in the UK.
So I was out in the forest fromthen in my 20s a lot of the
time making charcoal, trying toto enhance forests there for
wildlife.
I had a door mask project going.
The door mask species is veryrare and in some some forest
(10:03):
close to extinction there, sothat was a little project I had
going.
But yeah, from from that Ifound I had an aptitude, if you
like, for working with peoplebringing different interests
together and working on foreststandards, and that's how I
ended up working on the UKforest standard and from there
working internationally withwith FSC.
(10:24):
I thought I'd always like livein the UK and my passion was for
these small forests there.
But yeah, it's been such agreat privilege to work
internationally.
I've been to the Congo Basinand I've been to Borneo and and
all kinds of places in SouthAmerica, brazil, so I've seen a
lot of tropical forests andAustralia as well amazing forest
(10:46):
there.
So I've been so privileged tosee the forests I have around
the world.
But at the same time I've beenquite disappointed and
disillusioned by the forestindustry, and to come here and
see how forests have been beenmanaged here has also been.
Yeah, it's been heartbreakingat times to see just how
devastating some of the forestryhere has has been, and so
(11:10):
that's that's kind of where mypassion has come from, and I'm
fortunate now to be workingfirst down on this biomass
campaign in particular.
Janet Sumner (11:20):
Okay, that sounds like an interesting journey from
a door mouse to working and hecan start working on following
caribou.
Caribou door mouse.
Richard Robertson (11:30):
Yeah, and don't just speak.
It seems to be a commonlanguage between us.
Janet Sumner (11:34):
Yeah, it's a thread, okay, and you can choose
who or how you want to answerthis, but I just want to get a
sense of a shape of the standcampaign on forest.
I know stand does a lot morethan forest and forestry, or
stand Earth does a lot more thanforest and forestry, but maybe
(11:57):
you could zero in on just yourcampaigns and your thinking
around forest etc.
So it's not just forestry butforest.
So I'll maybe just let eitherone of you pick up the baton and
talk about that.
Tegan Hansen (12:13):
Sure, I can give it a go and Richard, feel free
to jump in after.
So stand, as an organizationactually was known as forest
ethics for a long time, has ahistory of really focusing on
forest issues throughcampaigning on corporate
(12:33):
sourcing policies.
I think there was a time whenthe early team at stand saw a
real lack of action fromprovincial and federal levels of
government on forest issues andsaw an opportunity to build
power by leveraging corporationsand leveraging their need to
(12:54):
appeal to customers as a way tochange policy when governments
were slow to move.
And so over the years that'staken on certain campaigns from
the Crockwood Sound and theGreat Bahrain Forest, but has
really changed form, I think, ashas been needed and called for
(13:18):
over the years.
And the change to stand was areflection of, first of all, the
organization broadening fromfocusing on forest to focusing
on planet and climate and peoplemore broadly.
And so now the organizationcampaigns from a range of topics
, from forests here on the WestCoast of this continent to
(13:42):
Amazonia Forest work withIndigenous federations in
Amazonia to work against fossilfuels.
That's rooted in localcommunity policy opportunities
in our safe cities campaigns toworking on coal use in the
fashion industry and fastfashion and so really the scale
(14:05):
is broad and I could go on.
There's a lot of campaigns beingrun at stand, but they share in
their values, kind ofprinciples around supporting
impacted communities, doing workthat really speaks to people in
place and planet.
And so forest while theorganization is more than a
(14:26):
forest campaign organization,certainly I think forest
campaigning is at the core ofthe identity of stand still and
specifically in the PacificNorthwest where we really have
our basis, so especially inBritish Columbia and then also
through Washington and Oregon tosome extent.
But our forest campaigns arereally focused on British
(14:46):
Columbia, which is where Richardand I live.
And so since I started at stand, the focus has really been on
old growth forests and onexpanding this biomass campaign
that Richard leads, because thebiomass sector represents one of
(15:06):
the fastest growing threats toforest here in British Columbia
and also around the world really, but increasingly in other
places in Canada.
And for old growth, the focus, Imean old growth has been a
source of land resistance sincecolonization started here and
old growth has also been acampaign that people you know
(15:29):
you'll talk to people in BCwho've been forest campaigners
and they've been working to tryto protect old growth for
decades, and I think there'sstill sort of some public
misinformation and you stilltalk to people who are shocked
that it's perfectly legal to gocut down a 200, 300,000, 2000
year old tree.
And even though we have veryfew of those, you know beautiful
(15:51):
, big treat old growth foreststhat we can find remaining in
the province, they're stillunder threat, and so we've seen
an opportunity with thegovernment we have, with certain
steps that are being taken, totry to do a really big push with
an enormous amount of otherorganizations and grassroots,
(16:12):
and first especially FirstNations, led efforts around the
province to protect old growth,and so that's been a driving
focus of Stan's work as wellover the last few years.
Janet Sumner (16:23):
And I just asked a clarifying question on that,
just to bring all of ouraudience along how do you define
old growth or what would be thedefinition that you have for
old growth?
We don't need to pay attentionto anybody else's definition
right now.
Absolutely.
How would you define it?
Tegan Hansen (16:37):
Well, we use the provincial definition.
So British Columbia has areally specific definition for
old growth, and that is when youlook at a stand of trees, a
number of those trees have to be250,000 years of age or more in
coastal or inland rainforestecosystems and in drier
(16:57):
ecosystems in BC, which is themajority of the province, 140
years or more.
So that is the specificdefinition of old growth, and
that's not to say those are theonly forests that are valuable.
You might hear us use thingslike natural or primary forests
to describe forests that haven'tbeen industrially logged or
degraded, and those are alsoreally essential.
But when we talk about oldgrowth in the context of British
(17:21):
Columbia, that is, specificallywe're talking about those
forests where trees are either250 years old or more, or 140
years old or more.
Janet Sumner (17:30):
So I'm just trying to do the math on that.
So that's trees like from the17 something or other, or 18 or
1900 years.
Tegan Hansen (17:39):
Yeah.
Janet Sumner (17:40):
You know, that's a lot.
Tegan Hansen (17:43):
They have seen a lot and I was in and I was
really fortunate to visit astand, a seeder, a small seeder
grove on the coast this pastsummer and the trees hard to age
them.
They had some heart rot whichmeans the center of the tree has
kind of worn out.
I guess you could say you couldthink of it, but the trees
could have been anywhere from800 to 2000 years old and
(18:05):
they've been flagged to belogged.
So you know that's, you thinkof those trees and what they've
seen and you know the evidenceof cultural use going back who
knows how many generations fromFirst Nations.
It's really astounding to thinkof those trees not just as a
collection of wood but as abeing that has, like, existed
and withstood so much and hasfed this deep, rich ecosystem.
(18:30):
That is why there's, you know,such an abundance of life on
this coast and this in thisplace.
Janet Sumner (18:37):
If you like listening to the clear cut and
want to keep the content coming,support the show.
It would mean a lot to Kai andI.
The link to do so will be inthe episode description below.
Kaya Adleman (18:49):
You can also become a supporter by going to
our website atwwwwildlandsleagueorg.
Slash the clear cut and alsomake sure to leave us a review
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It would really help thepodcast.
Janet Sumner (19:06):
Okay, Richard, I just want to turn to the biomass
campaign, and you and I've hadother interactions on
degradation etc.
So we can also talk about thoseas well, but maybe just fill us
in on the biomass campaign.
Richard Robertson (19:23):
Sure, yeah.
So for people who don't knowwhat biomass is, it's trees
By-mass.
Actually, to take a step back,biomass is a term that refers to
anything that's been grown interms of like woody material,
leaf material.
(19:44):
It could be waste material, butour campaign is focused on
forest biomass and the issuehere is that trees have been
taken whole trees have beentaken here in BC and they are
being converted into pellets andthen they're being shipped all
(20:05):
the way to the United Kingdom,most famously, but also we now
find a lot of them maybe 70% areactually being shipped to Japan
and they're being burned inwhat were coal-fired power
stations and surprisingly Ithink this is the piece that
(20:26):
people are always surprised bythat this is then seen burning.
That this is basically burningthese forests is seen as a
climate solution, and this is abig solution for the countries
who are part of the UnitedNations and who are trying to
meet their globalresponsibilities or their global
commitments for reducing carbonemissions.
(20:50):
So actually, in Europe and theUK, this renewable energy source
, as they term it, is actuallymaking up almost more than half
of all the renewable energy.
So solar wind, which are nowbecoming so much more prevalent
and so much more affordable, arenot as big in terms of the UK,
(21:14):
for example, and theirmeasurements of their
achievement towards net zero.
And yeah, that means, then,that the forests here are now
being exploited for this purpose, and so it's a new threat, if
(21:35):
you like.
And it's not only is it causingor enabling forestry to go
deeper into the forest thatalready been exploited, but it's
also emitting a lot more carboninto the atmosphere right at
the forest level.
(21:55):
So we're cutting forests thatshould be carbon sink and should
be storing carbon, and then,add to that, we're then burning
this, these forests and thesetrees, in what was a coal fired
power station, and emittingcarbon to the atmosphere, and
then going back to looking atthe forests here.
(22:16):
What they're expecting is thatthey then grow back and that,
therefore, the rationale is thatit's carbon neutral.
These forests are not going togrow back in the state.
They're not going to go backfor tens or hundreds of years,
and they're never going to growback to the same majestic state
that we see them today, andtheir ability to store carbon,
(22:39):
therefore, has been severelydegraded.
And yeah, so it's like on thosethree counts, this is really
not a renewable source of energy, but, unfortunately, the
international climate and carbonaccounting rules have gone down
this path and allowed forcountries to not properly count
(22:59):
the carbon that's being emittedby their forest industry at a
country level.
So they're not really lookingat the soils, they're not
looking at all the dead woodthat could be slowly decomposing
in the forest and not emittingso much carbon.
They're instead saying, oh, youcould take all of that material
and burn it in a coal what wasa coal fire power station
(23:22):
somewhere overseas, and at thatlevel as well, they're not then
counting all of the emissionsthey're putting into the
atmosphere.
In fact they count it as carbonneutral.
So the burning still is likeretrograde in terms of the power
stations themselves.
The whole industrial revolutionwe came through using forests
(23:43):
for power, for making iron andall the rest, and for then
powering all kinds of industrialprocesses.
And then people realized, oh,there's coal, we could use that,
and it's we're.
Our forests are running out,let's switch to coal and oil.
This is a retrograde step andto be using the precious forests
(24:03):
we have here.
I think also the forestindustry here.
Forest workers who hear aboutthis are also shocked that the
resource that they feel they'vebeen building up is then being
cut, converted to pellets andburnt elsewhere as some kind of
false renewable energy solution.
So that's the situation we'rein, and, yeah, there are a lot
(24:27):
more angles to this.
And the thing that's, I thinkwe and other groups such as such
as the Wildlands League andmany others that have signed on
to a letter recently, have comeup against as the subsidies that
governments are giving to thisindustry.
Without the subsidies, it wouldappear that this whole industry
(24:50):
would be would not beprofitable.
So not only have we got thissubsidized renewable so-called
renewable energy solution, butwithout the subsidies it would
not be profitable, it would notbe a solution at all.
Wind, solar storage ofelectricity they're all coming
(25:10):
up and they're all becoming veryaffordable, and yet governments
are turning to this biomass asthe solution that they're
looking to, and so that's wherewe're really kind of scratching
our heads and trying to findways of letting people know that
this is not the way to go.
And yeah, we're going to degradeour forest even further if we
(25:32):
go down this path.
Janet Sumner (25:40):
Sorry, that's terrific.
I'm going to maybe spend sometime unpacking that a little bit
, but I just wanted tounderstand does the biomass
campaign overlap with the oldgrowth campaign?
Richard Robertson (25:52):
Yeah, that's a great question.
We are certainly looking to domore of that and get more
evidence that certainly we'vedone a lot of research already
to show that whole trees arecoming out of forests here in
British Columbia and going intothe pellet industry.
Tegan, maybe you could talk abit more to the potential links
(26:17):
and things.
You've gone and seen some ofthe work that's been done in
terms of the CLIFLs and thepellet mills and what's been in
our experience then.
Tegan Hansen (26:28):
Yeah, it's such an interesting question because of
course everything is connectedand certainly I think you can
see the chain.
The industry has shifted in BCand that itself is a connection
that underpins the campaign.
So in British Columbia, youknow, we're still seeing such a
boom and bust economy Somepeople have called it the
(26:51):
continuation of the gold rusheconomy and communities are
still really suffering from theimpacts of mills that continue
to curtail their shifts or shutdown completely after having
taken all of these resourcesfrom the local lands and then
kind of shutting down theiroperations and moving to places
like the US southeast, and inthere that gap that's created,
(27:13):
communities are looking to, well, what other opportunities are
there?
And the concern is, of course,that pellet plants have such a
different level of what they canaccept in terms of fiber.
So what you know traditionalmill needs a certain quality of
wood to turn into, you know,products like wood, products
(27:35):
that you might expect like twoby fours, as an example.
Well, pellet plants can usemore materials and so if a
traditional mill, a big companylike Kenfort West Treasure, has
cleared an area of what you knowthey can get and make a profit
off of from the forest, a pelletcompany might have more
(27:58):
opportunity to go in and stilllog other things that weren't
considered merchantable.
Yeah, but the thing that youknow Richard was also talking
about that we're struggling totrack is it is really hard to
get information from theprovince of BC, which really
should be tracking things likewhere this would go when it's
logged in a cut block.
It's really hard to actuallyfind that out without doing a
(28:22):
lot of really expensive research.
And so a third party contractormight go in and clear, cut a
block and they might do it underthe license of a big company or
the tenure of a really bigcompany that has a mill
somewhere.
But a certain number of thosetrees might be cut specifically
to go to a pellet plant if they,you know, log more or have
(28:43):
trees that aren't consideredmillable at that other mill.
So that's one piece that makesit quite difficult to track and
we have, you know, heard ofcases where places that were
marked as old growth wereawarded a license to a pellet
plant through BC's auctionsystems, so BC timber sales.
(29:06):
We've heard those stories butagain, it's hard to track
because when we've inquiredabout it, companies will often
claim that they'll sell the bigtrees to a mill to mill for
things like again, like your,two by fours, so without
actually being there on the landall the time and following
these tracks and I mean it's alot more complicated than that
(29:30):
but you can't actually tellwhere things are going.
And so that's one challengethat we've encountered with
pellet plants.
Now I have gone and visited,like Richard said, I've gone and
visited cut blocks that werelogged by a pellet company north
on the daycast territories,north of Prince George, and I've
seen pellet plants in BurnsLake in south of Prince George,
(29:57):
in these communities where youhave a pellet plant and a huge
yard just full of logs and youwalk the perimeter of that log
yard and you can see all logs ofall different species, some
that look totally healthy, somethat are bigger than you'd
expect, some that you're kind ofshocked to see that they're
about to be ground up and turnedinto pellets, some that you'd
(30:20):
be shocked to see in any logyard because you'd think that
that tree should have been leftstanding.
And that's the reality.
And then I think the other andwe can talk more about this.
The other thing we've beentalking a lot with our partners
and around BC is well what theprovince is signaling some very
(30:44):
concerning trends around theirresponse to wildfires and we've,
of course, just had the worstwildfire season on record in
British Columbia and we'realready getting signals, with
the winter that we're having,that there's going to be
potentially another recordbreaking fire season and some of
the subsidies that pelletplants get from the government
(31:05):
of British Columbia are gearfrom what we can tell.
Again, it's hard to getinformation, but from what we
can tell they're geared towardsfireproofing quote unquote
fireproofing communities so,which involves sometimes harvest
.
And what we're really worriedabout is that, without good
oversight and with reallydubious science and with a
(31:27):
province that's still strugglingto admit that, yes, well,
climate change is a huge factorinto why we're getting the fires
we're getting, forestry and thepractices of logging that have
gone on in this province for thelast number of decades is a
huge reason why we're gettingthe fires that we're getting and
the severity of fires and thesize of fires, and the province
(31:49):
is still reckoning with that andstruggling to admit its
complicity in that.
And so, seeing, with a lack ofoversight and the increased
logging that's also going tofeed pellet plants, you know,
under the guise of fireproofingand without being able to
evaluate are these goodpractices or not, and sometimes
they might be good practices andvery often they might not be.
(32:09):
That is a huge concern for usand, with the frankly, with so
little old growth left and withthe downturn in that sector, it
is a place where we're worriedabout the ramifications and
there's an inevitable overlap inour campaigns, because the
provincial response to oldgrowth and to revising,
(32:32):
hopefully, its management of oldgrowth for us, in partnership
with First Nations, will likelyhave some profound implications
for the wood pellet sector.
Kaya Adleman (32:44):
Hey, are you liking the clear cut as much as
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(33:05):
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It seems or at least in myunderstanding of the overlap
between the two issues is thatthe justification for using wood
pellet as biomass for renewableenergy in air quotes is that
(33:25):
the pellets are a byproduct oflike mill waste and from what
you're saying, that's ultimatelynot always the case, or it's
hard to determine whether or notthat is the case.
Richard Robertson (33:40):
Yeah, well, it's getting easier to determine
whether that's the case.
The industry the industrycertainly takes a lot of what
they call mill waste.
But then if you say your saythe pellet mill is right next
door and this happens, a lot isright next door to a sawmill.
50% of the saw log is is termedwaste.
(34:04):
So this or the sawdust or the,or the kind of the I've got the
term now David where you takethe, the outside of the log off,
you square it off.
So yeah, my forestryterminology is right.
Yeah, okay, so the so a lot ofa lot of the log itself in terms
(34:29):
of the sawing process, themilling process, ends up being
termed as waste and the, thepellet industry, is then taking
that material.
So 50% of the log, and thatclearly is not waste, that's
going in back into the systemand it's, it's turning over a
(34:52):
profit, or at least a subsidizedprofit in the case of pellets.
So it can't be discounted andtreated as waste in this way,
and so then we're.
So that's some of the materialthat's going in.
Clearly, then the, the mills,are complicit and the UK, in
their sourcing, is out, holdsthem to be complicit.
(35:14):
They turn this as residues.
So even if the, the pellets aremade from this waste or residue
material, their responsibilityaccording to the UK
sustainability criteria is tostill look and say where did
this, where did this would comefrom?
Did it come from what we mightterm a high conservation value
forest and all growth forest?
And this and the likelihood ofthat happening when you're
(35:39):
sourcing from a, from a log yardor that, where there's logs
coming in from a huge area andand the soulmail is taking in
everything that they can get andlegally taking all growth
forest is very high.
The chances of you getting allgrowth in there is super high.
So that, yeah, trying to tracethat back and to demonstrate
(36:02):
from a forest to the pellet,this is all growth forest is, is
clearly very difficult thing todo, and not only for us but
also for the industry.
Trying to try to show, oh yeah,we're all sustainable, we're
doing the right thing.
I don't see how they can showthat and that's that's a big gap
in their sustainability claims,if you like, and I think that's
(36:23):
something that we in the futurewould would certainly like to
look more deeply into.
Kaya Adleman (36:30):
Do you think other developed countries who are
looking to source biomass fromCanada choose to do so because
of the image that Canada is aleader in sustainable forest
management and that they feelsafe doing so?
There's the underlyingassumption that it will satisfy
(36:53):
any sustainability guidelines orrequirements that those
countries might haveindividually.
Richard Robertson (37:01):
Yeah, I think so.
I think the way that Canada hasbeen selling itself as having a
sustainable forest industry andwe are seen as a very green
country in terms of our forestry, yeah, that's certainly been a
factor in countries like the UKand now Japan taking timber from
(37:22):
here and believing that it'ssourced from forests that are
going to go on forever, andthey're certainly not going on
forever in the state that theywere, even a few decades ago.
We've seen a huge amount ofdegradation in the forests here.
That's the real picture andthat's the picture that we and
(37:46):
partners, engos around thecountry are trying to paint and
depict.
Unfortunately, yeah, thegovernment is still trying to
define for themselves whatdegradation is, but they're
coming up against Europe, whichEuropean regulators are saying
now that they will not acceptwood from degradation and
(38:06):
deforestation.
So those two things together.
Also at the recent COP, whichwe might want to talk a bit more
about, there was mention in thepapers that came out of that,
the announcements, theagreements that they made, that
forest degradation was notacceptable and that biomass was
(38:30):
also had to look to that andunderstand yeah, this is not the
way to be going.
Janet Sumner (38:47):
I'm going to geek out a bit with you, Richard.
Right now I want to just talkabout biomass and some of the
carbon exchanges.
And so we've worked a littlebit on biomass and I'll just be
very clear Wildlands League isof the opinion that biomass can
work in very limited situations.
(39:08):
For example, if you're trulyusing mill waste, maybe heat the
mill that you're working in.
That's when you could saybiomass, because it is a waste
product that was produced bythat mill and you were going to
use it.
You'd still have to go back andprove that the forest that you
harvested was being sustainablyharvested, which is another
(39:29):
question entirely.
But just to put that on thetable, we're not ideologically
opposed that biomass can never,ever, ever, ever work.
We're just saying that there'ssome clear definitions around
that.
So somebody cuts a tree down,it goes to a mill.
Some of the planning of thatplank to get it to be square
(39:54):
from a round tree creates somewaste, and that waste in the
sawdust goes where?
Because I'm assuming it's kindof wet wood.
Is that correct?
Where does that go?
Richard Robertson (40:14):
Yeah, so there are lots of different
potential uses for thatso-called waste.
Janet Sumner (40:23):
But doesn't it have to get dried out at some
point?
Richard Robertson (40:25):
That's true.
Yeah, so that's another aspectof the industry as well Drying
pellets.
It varies as to how they drypellets, so different pellet
mills will do it in differentways.
But sometimes they use gas, sothey're emitting.
Yeah, they're using a highcarbon fuel to dry, so do we?
Janet Sumner (40:50):
count that?
When we look at the pelletslike, is that carbon that was
used to dry that fuel source?
Does that get counted into thecarbon equation?
Richard Roberts (40:58):
Internationally they're supposed to, yeah, so,
from the mills here.
So there's one big companyactually, which we haven't named
yet, and that company is Drax.
So Drax is the name of a tinylittle village, originally in
Yorkshire, and that is where oneof the biggest I think is the
(41:19):
biggest what was the coal-firedpower station in Europe is
situated, and it's bigger thanactually that in terms of
megawatts it's bigger thananything in here in Canada and
in the US from what I've seen.
So it's a huge facility.
They're taking all the pelletsfrom here to there.
(41:41):
In terms of greenhouse gasemissions and in terms of the
UK's sustainability criteria,they're supposed to measure
every single operation thatmight add to or subtract from
more likely add to thegreenhouse gas emissions.
So the drying process itselfshould be counted within that.
(42:02):
And, yeah, there's someevidence recently published to
show that they're not reportingvery well on this and therefore
the regulations aren't beingvery well enforced in terms of
the drying processes and theemissions that are coming out of
(42:22):
some of these mills.
And then they have to ship it,and then there's the shipping.
Janet Sumner (42:29):
So that's got to require some emissions.
Is that counted as well?
Richard Robertson (42:35):
That also should be counted.
Yeah, that's also added intothe equation.
And so, yeah, from here to theUK.
Well, if we fly, it's 6,000miles, right, is it miles or
kilometers?
Janet Sumner (42:52):
I don't know I haven't mentioned it lately, but
that's a heck of a flight.
Richard Robertson (42:57):
Yeah, but if you, in order to take the
pellets, they have to go aroundand down through the Panama
Canal or wherever the route, andit's more like 12,000
kilometers, so it's a long wayto go and there's a lot of
emissions involved in thatprocess as well.
So yeah, the drying process,the cutting in the forest
process and the emissions thatcome from that, it all should be
(43:22):
and generally is accounted forin that process, but still, at
the other end, they don't countthe emissions at the coal stack,
if you like, so at the powerstation.
Janet Sumner (43:37):
So then it gets to Drax, they burn it and the
emissions that come out of thesmoke stack are not counted.
Richard Robertson (43:45):
That's what you're saying they're not
counted.
They're not counted as neutralat that point.
Janet Sumner (43:51):
And it's also assumed to be neutral at that
point, because you're going tobe able to regrow the forest
right, that Canada's forest andforestry is sustainable, so we
basically sustain our forest, soit's no problem.
Richard Robertson (44:03):
That's the assumption.
Yeah, and sadly, from the workwe've done on forest degradation
and the state of the forestreport, the alternative that we
launched, that's clearly not thecase.
We've been trying to point thatout that these forests are not
going to grow back in timeeither.
The assumption yeah, if we'relooking at 2030 to be carbon
(44:27):
neutral as a grand kind of inthe grand scheme of things, a
grand target, 2030, the forestthat we're taking from right now
, there's no way that they'regoing to grow back in.
What is that now?
Four or five years, six years?
Janet Sumner (44:43):
So you've cut down a let's talk about a young tree
.
In BC terms, You've cut down a200-year-old tree.
You've turned it into how let's, you've shipped it around the
planet.
They've burned it.
It's carbon neutral and ifthere was, if the assumption was
correct that you could regrowin a sustainable way and that
(45:05):
tree was to come back, carbonneutrality for all intents and
purposes would be reached in 200years.
Richard Robertson (45:14):
That's the assumption, but then the science
further shows that taking thoselarge trees out, those large
trees and this is something thatscience has not been fully
clear on until fairly recentlymore recent research would say
that a large tree is actuallyabsorbing increasingly over its
lifetime.
(45:34):
As it gets bigger, it'sincreasingly absorbing more
carbon than a whole hectaresworth of small trees that might
surround it.
So what we're experiencing hereis our forest getting a lot
younger as well.
So over the landscape we've gotthese very young forests maybe
(45:55):
to 60, 70 years before they comearound and harvest them again.
That's those trees and thesoils and the ecology within
there.
There's no way that that'sgoing to store the same amount
of carbon as an ancient veterantree within an old growth forest
setting.
(46:15):
So, yeah, the way they'reaccounting really does not take
into account the natural stateof things and this huge carbon
sink that we naturally have here.
Janet Sumner (46:30):
I was trying to bait you into saying what I'm
thinking, which is, I'm willingto accept your carbon neutrality
if it's out to 200 years.
If you want to treat these ascarbon neutral, let's treat them
by 200 years, which means we'vewell and truly missed our 2050
target.
And so if you can find me a wayto grow a 200-year-old tree in
(46:52):
eight years or four years, giveme a shout, because I think
that's impossible.
Richard Robertson (46:57):
We're way off on our targets.
You're right.
It may be that certaincommunities and First Nations
communities, who are very remoteand rely on diesel, say, for
example, for their power, it maybe in some cases more efficient
for them to be using materialsthat come from their own sawing
(47:23):
and milling operations, and evenin those cases, I think to
think of it as carbon neutral isprobably not the right thinking
.
It might be that it's a sourceof energy for them, but to think
of it in those terms of this isgoing to grow back and we're
going to become carbon neutral.
(47:43):
Sadly, this is not really thecase, and I'd hope that the
government can look more tofunding solar, wind-powered and
ways of storing electricity thatcan help communities such as
these.
But some cases, yeah, they maystill have to fall back on
biomass, but then again, it'sheavily subsidized and if
(48:10):
subsidies dry up, then thesecommunities might also be in
further trouble if they thenfind themselves having to pay
quite high prices.
The international market,unfortunately, for pellets is
growing and, yeah, the pricefluctuates a lot and a lot of
companies that have set up inthis business.
(48:32):
So there's two really big onesthat I can think of Drax, that
operate a lot here and a companycalled Enviva who really
dominated the United States.
And Enviva are on the brink ofcollapse financially.
Their shares have fallen reallydramatically over the last six
(48:56):
months and they're now beingquestioned as to whether they
should be on the stock exchange,even because of the state the
company's in, yeah, and thesecompanies.
There's a lot of reasons whythat's happened, but these
companies are very heavilyreliant on subsidies, and those
subsidies come from ourgovernments and they're
(49:19):
justified by them, as this falseclimate solution has been
contributing towards carbonneutrality, and so, yeah, that's
.
The problem we're confrontedwith here is that it's being
used almost as an excuse to keepcutting the forests, and that's
(49:39):
really not the kind of climatesolution that we should be
looking to.
Kaya Adleman (49:50):
All right, janet, that was a very, very
interesting conversation that wehad with Richard and Tegan, and
yeah.
So, as for my key takeaways, Ithink it's very interesting I
think we've heard this too alittle bit in the episode that
(50:11):
we did with Peter Wood but kindof how the underlying frame in
British Columbia is to kind ofcontinue to log the forests in
British Columbia and how there'skind of these insidious ways in
which the action of continuingto log forests in BC is being
posed as a climate solution.
(50:32):
It's being treated as a way tomanage in quotes for insect
infestations, to be used as away to suppress or mitigate
wildfires.
Now is being used as a way tooffer a solution to the reliance
on fossil fuels as a source ofenergy.
(50:53):
So this conversation for me hasbeen very emblematic of the
ways in which we're still seeingbusiness as usual approaches
under a more polished lensthat's more palatable for the
public.
Janet Sumner (51:10):
It's a great rebranding exercise.
Yes, right, like it's a pivot.
We're going to rebrand.
We're not taking trees, we'reactually creating biomass.
It'll help solve the energytransition and guess what?
It's climate neutral.
So it's actually really.
It's amazing how that pivot canhappen and I think for many
(51:32):
people who are in busy lives, wethink, oh great, somebody's
helping solve the climate changeproblem and we want that, we
deeply want that we have.
You know, a lot of people aredeeply concerned and have grief,
and kids and older people andparents are concerned about the
(51:52):
climate.
They see it, they feel it, andso people who are saying that
we've got some solutions.
It seems like it's great newsand there's a sense of relief.
We have that same problem on,you know, mining for critical
minerals, as if it's.
You know, we're going toelectrify all cars with these
critical minerals.
But heck, where do they comefrom, and how we're mining and
(52:13):
what we're mining and thelandscape that we leave behind.
Does that have actually acarbon impact?
We've got, you know, the ringof fire, or the proposed ring of
fire, which is in this enormouspeatland complex that contains
billions of tons of carbon.
Well, that's not going to becarbon neutral.
Yet, you know we seem to.
This rebranding exercise thatindustry and government seem to
(52:36):
be able to do is very convincing.
And I think the other thing thatis reliant here in terms of the
wood pellets is that we've hada hundred years of fire
suppression, where we've beendeliberately suppressing fire.
So now it's like, oh, let's getin there and log it so we can
prevent fires.
Well, it, it, it.
That's all built up because weactually stopped the natural
(52:58):
process.
And the other thing I found veryinteresting of what Richard was
saying is that 50% of a saw logis deemed waste.
And then the other thing thathappens for me is that 50% of a
saw log has an economic valuebecause now it's getting turned
into wood pellets.
So we're harvesting and 50% ofthat log is being used for
(53:20):
biomass.
In other words, it might havenot been economically feasible
to take that tree down if wedidn't have the marketplace for
biomass.
And then, yeah, I guess we'rewe're hearing that it's that one
of the unintended consequencesof the climate agreements is
(53:41):
that we're trying to, you know,triple our renewable energy, and
so that gets us into how do weget more biomass?
Or people are seeing this as amarket opportunity.
So those are all things thatstruck me from our conversation.
Kaya Adleman (53:56):
Yeah, I think what was also interesting to me is
this idea that the biomassthat's being shipped to other
countries from Canada issupposedly meeting all of these
individual countries likesustainability guidelines for
clean fuels, and I think thatalso just speaks to the kind of
(54:19):
veneer of sustainable forestmanagement in Canada that it's
okay to take wood pellets as asource of renewable energy from
Canada because it's a it's aleader in sustainable forest
management.
Janet Sumner (54:34):
Well, we have a roaring second episode coming up
, so I know that people will bedelighted to listen to that as
well, because it's it gets intothe COP and other issues, and so
I'm looking forward to thesecond part of this.
Kaya Adleman (54:46):
Yeah, me too.
Janet Sumner (54:50):
If you like listening to the clear cut and
want to keep the content coming,support the show.
It would mean a lot to Kai andI.
The link to do so will be inthe episode description below.
Kaya Adleman (55:01):
You can also become a supporter by going to
our website atwwwwildlandsleagueorg.
Slash the clear cut and alsomake sure to leave us a review
on your favorite podcaststreaming platform.
It would really help thepodcast and stay tuned for new
episodes by following us onsocial media.
Janet Sumner (55:22):
Links at wwwwildlandsleagueorg on
Instagram, Twitter and Facebook,or LinkedIn, of course.
Kaya Adleman (55:28):
See you next time.
Welcome to the ClearCut.
Hi, I'm Janet Sumner, ExecutiveDirector at Wildlands League.
Kaya Adleman (00:08):
And I'm Kaia Adelman, Carbon Manager at
Wildlands League.
Janet Sumner (00:14):
Wildlands League is a Canadian conservation
organization working onprotecting the natural world.
Kaya Adleman (00:21):
The ClearCut is bringing to you the much needed
conversation on Canadian forestmanagement and how we can better
protect one of Canada's mostimportant ecosystems, as our
forests are reaching a tippingpoint.
Janet Sumner (00:40):
Okay, so we can start on our introduction for
the episode that we had withRichard and Tegan from STAND.
It's a non-profit environmentalgroup that was started in
Canada I believe it was formerlycalled Forest Ethics and a good
friend of mine, support Berman,was one of the original
(01:01):
founders, if not the originalfounder, I can't remember the
exact history of it.
I think this is a reallyimportant conversation we're
having with Tegan and withRichard.
It's wide-ranging.
You're going to benefit fromthis.
We talk about biomass, we talkabout wildfires.
What else do we talk about?
Kaya Adleman (01:21):
We talk about the state of Talk about old growth
in BC.
Janet Sumner (01:25):
Old growth in BC, the way that pellets are shipped
around the globe.
We have a good conversationwith Tegan about her experience
at the Conference of the Parties, or what's commonly called the
COP.
It's a climate COP Conferenceof the Parties.
It's all the signatories to theClimate Agreement.
We also have a nature COP.
We had that here in Canada lastyear.
(01:47):
This is to talk about theclimate COP.
It's overlap with forestry andhow biomass is becoming an
engine for the energy transitionand what that means for
Canada's forests.
What were your other big thingsthat you're looking forward to
(02:08):
in this conversation, kaya?
Kaya Adleman (02:11):
I think when I started out at Wildlands League
and I was just getting my feetwet in the very complex,
many-issued story of forestmanagement in Canada, the one
piece of the puzzle that I thinkshocked me the most was the
biomass piece and the fact thatwe're We'll hear more about this
(02:35):
, but the idea that we'reshipping wood pellets around the
world and treating that as acarbon-neutral form of energy
was very mind-blowing to me.
I think you were saying, janet,too, when we were talking about
this many, many months ago,that this is something that we
tell people who aren'tentrenched in the issues, and
(02:57):
that's also the very what.
That's crazy.
I didn't know that.
I think, hopefully, that's alsoa takeaway that many of our
listeners will get from thisconversation as well.
Janet Sumner (03:10):
Yeah, this is.
I'm looking forward to it.
So, without further ado, we'regoing to open up the box that is
Tegan and Richard and have agood conversation with them and
learn a lot more about forestryin British Columbia and old
growth in biomass and the cup.
Okay, well, today we areblessed to have both Richard
(03:32):
Robertson and Tegan and I do nothave your last name, but you're
going to tell me what your lastname is in a minute and Kaya
and I are really pleased to behere ever having this
conversation with you.
I'm very glad that we could allget together at the same time
in the same place and have thisconversation.
So let me just start by askingeach of you to introduce a
(03:55):
little bit about yourself.
Tegan, can you start with yourlast name for me and tell me a
little bit about yourself andhow you came to be working with
stand, et cetera.
Tegan Hansen (04:07):
Thank you, Sure, thank you.
Yeah, my name is Tegan Hansen.
I'm the senior forestcampaigner at standearth and I
came to this work in aninteresting way.
I'm based currently most of thetime here on the Musqueam,
squamish and Sliwatu territoriesin Vancouver, british Columbia,
but I spent a lot of my time inthe area where I grew up, which
(04:31):
is the West Kootenays, sinaiaks, sinha and Sierch territories,
and actually what first inspiredme to be involved in this work
was learning how to snowshoe inKootenay Pass, tracking a herd
of mountain caribou with a localbiologist, and that was a
(04:51):
really profound experience, inpart because that herd at the
time was severely endangered andnow actually has disappeared.
They have been extirpated orgone locally extinct and in
through the course of kind of mylife I've worked in farm,
animal welfare, worked withfarmers on certifications, I've
(05:12):
done a lot of communityorganizing around climate
justice and I came to no standwhen I was organizing in
Vancouver against the TransMountain Pipeline and supporting
an Indigenous led resistanceproject called Kroquo Sautuk or
the Watch House, and got to knowthe folks that stand in the
work they did and saw this realopportunity to bridge all of
(05:34):
these worlds together, whichoften, I think in settler
society we hold a bit separatebetween wildlife and food and
land and human rights andclimate justice and all these
things which never felt thatseparate for me.
And so in this work that we doon forest, being able to bridge
those worlds and hold themtogether and I've been at Sands
(05:55):
now almost five years, which isa little terrifying to think
about and in that time I'vemostly focused my work on our
campaigns around old growth anddefending old growth forests
here in British Columbia.
Yeah, that's me.
Kaya Adleman (06:11):
Wow, thank you for that.
Janet Sumner (06:12):
That's pretty incredible.
So you started out by followinga herd of mountain caribou and
you ended up at stand.
What a beautiful story arc Okay.
Okay, that's great.
I mean it's terribly sad thatthat population has become
extirpated.
Obviously that's a very sadstory.
(06:35):
Richard, do you want to give usa bit of your journey, and I
can tell you're not from here.
Richard Robertson (06:42):
Yeah, people here tend to say, oh, you have
an accent, don't you?
And I'm like, yeah, I do, andso do you.
But yeah, I'm from the UKoriginally.
I moved here 10 years ago andwith my wife actually, my wife,
angeline, works for for stand aswell so we always end up seem
to follow each other through ourcareers in various
(07:05):
organizations.
So we actually met in Germany.
We worked for the Forest TudorCouncil in Bonn, and so I was
working, both working veryinternationally in forestry and,
yeah, I was working on nationalstandards in sort of 40 odd
countries, including Canada, andorganizing people to try and
(07:28):
try and align their foreststandards.
And so, yeah, I have a lot ofexperience in terms of
internationally where forestrylies and how things turn out
when forest industry comes alongand starts starts doing work in
the forest.
So, yeah, impacts on indigenouspeoples and on the environment
(07:50):
is a big thing for me, and so,yeah, it's been a great
privilege to come and live here.
I've lived here for 10 yearsNow.
We have two children.
They're quite young.
We live on the Sunshine Coastto live on the territories of
the Sheeshal nation and we wouldlive right on an inlet and the
Sheeshal inlet and it'sbeautiful out there and we see,
(08:13):
we see forestry going on aroundus and you can see the impacts,
but also there's some reallybeautiful forests still here to
explore and we love to goforaging, particularly for
mushrooms in the right season,and, yeah, just get the kids
outside and enjoying, yeah, theamazing bounty that is still,
(08:34):
fortunately, here and that'swhat I'm inspired by and excited
to help to further protect andenhance into the future.
Janet Sumner (08:46):
How did you come to work on forestry in in Europe
?
What was the path there?
You're six years old and youthought, oh, that's what I want
to do, or like, what was the?
Richard Robertson (08:58):
sort of yeah, I mean I come from now, I look
back at it and we live.
I lived and grew up in a verydegraded forest environment but
there was some very small.
There are still some very smallindigenous forests, native
forests in the UK and they'relike semi natural is how they're
referred to.
(09:19):
And so, yeah, where I lived andgrew up there was a river
valley and some, some, somenative forests left there.
I'd go walking with my dad onthe weekends.
We get out and I think that'swhy my passion started.
And then I studied geographyvery broad subject and I got
very interested in ecologythrough that and worked for a
(09:43):
wildlife trust in the UK.
So I was out in the forest fromthen in my 20s a lot of the
time making charcoal, trying toto enhance forests there for
wildlife.
I had a door mask project going.
The door mask species is veryrare and in some some forest
(10:03):
close to extinction there, sothat was a little project I had
going.
But yeah, from from that Ifound I had an aptitude, if you
like, for working with peoplebringing different interests
together and working on foreststandards, and that's how I
ended up working on the UKforest standard and from there
working internationally withwith FSC.
(10:24):
I thought I'd always like livein the UK and my passion was for
these small forests there.
But yeah, it's been such agreat privilege to work
internationally.
I've been to the Congo Basinand I've been to Borneo and and
all kinds of places in SouthAmerica, brazil, so I've seen a
lot of tropical forests andAustralia as well amazing forest
(10:46):
there.
So I've been so privileged tosee the forests I have around
the world.
But at the same time I've beenquite disappointed and
disillusioned by the forestindustry, and to come here and
see how forests have been beenmanaged here has also been.
Yeah, it's been heartbreakingat times to see just how
devastating some of the forestryhere has has been, and so
(11:10):
that's that's kind of where mypassion has come from, and I'm
fortunate now to be workingfirst down on this biomass
campaign in particular.
Janet Sumner (11:20):
Okay, that sounds like an interesting journey from
a door mouse to working and hecan start working on following
caribou.
Caribou door mouse.
Richard Robertson (11:30):
Yeah, and don't just speak.
It seems to be a commonlanguage between us.
Janet Sumner (11:34):
Yeah, it's a thread, okay, and you can choose
who or how you want to answerthis, but I just want to get a
sense of a shape of the standcampaign on forest.
I know stand does a lot morethan forest and forestry, or
stand Earth does a lot more thanforest and forestry, but maybe
(11:57):
you could zero in on just yourcampaigns and your thinking
around forest etc.
So it's not just forestry butforest.
So I'll maybe just let eitherone of you pick up the baton and
talk about that.
Tegan Hansen (12:13):
Sure, I can give it a go and Richard, feel free
to jump in after.
So stand, as an organizationactually was known as forest
ethics for a long time, has ahistory of really focusing on
forest issues throughcampaigning on corporate
(12:33):
sourcing policies.
I think there was a time whenthe early team at stand saw a
real lack of action fromprovincial and federal levels of
government on forest issues andsaw an opportunity to build
power by leveraging corporationsand leveraging their need to
(12:54):
appeal to customers as a way tochange policy when governments
were slow to move.
And so over the years that'staken on certain campaigns from
the Crockwood Sound and theGreat Bahrain Forest, but has
really changed form, I think, ashas been needed and called for
(13:18):
over the years.
And the change to stand was areflection of, first of all, the
organization broadening fromfocusing on forest to focusing
on planet and climate and peoplemore broadly.
And so now the organizationcampaigns from a range of topics
, from forests here on the WestCoast of this continent to
(13:42):
Amazonia Forest work withIndigenous federations in
Amazonia to work against fossilfuels.
That's rooted in localcommunity policy opportunities
in our safe cities campaigns toworking on coal use in the
fashion industry and fastfashion and so really the scale
(14:05):
is broad and I could go on.
There's a lot of campaigns beingrun at stand, but they share in
their values, kind ofprinciples around supporting
impacted communities, doing workthat really speaks to people in
place and planet.
And so forest while theorganization is more than a
(14:26):
forest campaign organization,certainly I think forest
campaigning is at the core ofthe identity of stand still and
specifically in the PacificNorthwest where we really have
our basis, so especially inBritish Columbia and then also
through Washington and Oregon tosome extent.
But our forest campaigns arereally focused on British
(14:46):
Columbia, which is where Richardand I live.
And so since I started at stand, the focus has really been on
old growth forests and onexpanding this biomass campaign
that Richard leads, because thebiomass sector represents one of
(15:06):
the fastest growing threats toforest here in British Columbia
and also around the world really, but increasingly in other
places in Canada.
And for old growth, the focus, Imean old growth has been a
source of land resistance sincecolonization started here and
old growth has also been acampaign that people you know
(15:29):
you'll talk to people in BCwho've been forest campaigners
and they've been working to tryto protect old growth for
decades, and I think there'sstill sort of some public
misinformation and you stilltalk to people who are shocked
that it's perfectly legal to gocut down a 200, 300,000, 2000
year old tree.
And even though we have veryfew of those, you know beautiful
(15:51):
, big treat old growth foreststhat we can find remaining in
the province, they're stillunder threat, and so we've seen
an opportunity with thegovernment we have, with certain
steps that are being taken, totry to do a really big push with
an enormous amount of otherorganizations and grassroots,
(16:12):
and first especially FirstNations, led efforts around the
province to protect old growth,and so that's been a driving
focus of Stan's work as wellover the last few years.
Janet Sumner (16:23):
And I just asked a clarifying question on that,
just to bring all of ouraudience along how do you define
old growth or what would be thedefinition that you have for
old growth?
We don't need to pay attentionto anybody else's definition
right now.
Absolutely.
How would you define it?
Tegan Hansen (16:37):
Well, we use the provincial definition.
So British Columbia has areally specific definition for
old growth, and that is when youlook at a stand of trees, a
number of those trees have to be250,000 years of age or more in
coastal or inland rainforestecosystems and in drier
(16:57):
ecosystems in BC, which is themajority of the province, 140
years or more.
So that is the specificdefinition of old growth, and
that's not to say those are theonly forests that are valuable.
You might hear us use thingslike natural or primary forests
to describe forests that haven'tbeen industrially logged or
degraded, and those are alsoreally essential.
But when we talk about oldgrowth in the context of British
(17:21):
Columbia, that is, specificallywe're talking about those
forests where trees are either250 years old or more, or 140
years old or more.
Janet Sumner (17:30):
So I'm just trying to do the math on that.
So that's trees like from the17 something or other, or 18 or
1900 years.
Tegan Hansen (17:39):
Yeah.
Janet Sumner (17:40):
You know, that's a lot.
Tegan Hansen (17:43):
They have seen a lot and I was in and I was
really fortunate to visit astand, a seeder, a small seeder
grove on the coast this pastsummer and the trees hard to age
them.
They had some heart rot whichmeans the center of the tree has
kind of worn out.
I guess you could say you couldthink of it, but the trees
could have been anywhere from800 to 2000 years old and
(18:05):
they've been flagged to belogged.
So you know that's, you thinkof those trees and what they've
seen and you know the evidenceof cultural use going back who
knows how many generations fromFirst Nations.
It's really astounding to thinkof those trees not just as a
collection of wood but as abeing that has, like, existed
and withstood so much and hasfed this deep, rich ecosystem.
(18:30):
That is why there's, you know,such an abundance of life on
this coast and this in thisplace.
Janet Sumner (18:37):
If you like listening to the clear cut and
want to keep the content coming,support the show.
It would mean a lot to Kai andI.
The link to do so will be inthe episode description below.
Kaya Adleman (18:49):
You can also become a supporter by going to
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Slash the clear cut and alsomake sure to leave us a review
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It would really help thepodcast.
Janet Sumner (19:06):
Okay, Richard, I just want to turn to the biomass
campaign, and you and I've hadother interactions on
degradation etc.
So we can also talk about thoseas well, but maybe just fill us
in on the biomass campaign.
Richard Robertson (19:23):
Sure, yeah.
So for people who don't knowwhat biomass is, it's trees
By-mass.
Actually, to take a step back,biomass is a term that refers to
anything that's been grown interms of like woody material,
leaf material.
(19:44):
It could be waste material, butour campaign is focused on
forest biomass and the issuehere is that trees have been
taken whole trees have beentaken here in BC and they are
being converted into pellets andthen they're being shipped all
(20:05):
the way to the United Kingdom,most famously, but also we now
find a lot of them maybe 70% areactually being shipped to Japan
and they're being burned inwhat were coal-fired power
stations and surprisingly Ithink this is the piece that
(20:26):
people are always surprised bythat this is then seen burning.
That this is basically burningthese forests is seen as a
climate solution, and this is abig solution for the countries
who are part of the UnitedNations and who are trying to
meet their globalresponsibilities or their global
commitments for reducing carbonemissions.
(20:50):
So actually, in Europe and theUK, this renewable energy source
, as they term it, is actuallymaking up almost more than half
of all the renewable energy.
So solar wind, which are nowbecoming so much more prevalent
and so much more affordable, arenot as big in terms of the UK,
(21:14):
for example, and theirmeasurements of their
achievement towards net zero.
And yeah, that means, then,that the forests here are now
being exploited for this purpose, and so it's a new threat, if
(21:35):
you like.
And it's not only is it causingor enabling forestry to go
deeper into the forest thatalready been exploited, but it's
also emitting a lot more carboninto the atmosphere right at
the forest level.
(21:55):
So we're cutting forests thatshould be carbon sink and should
be storing carbon, and then,add to that, we're then burning
this, these forests and thesetrees, in what was a coal fired
power station, and emittingcarbon to the atmosphere, and
then going back to looking atthe forests here.
(22:16):
What they're expecting is thatthey then grow back and that,
therefore, the rationale is thatit's carbon neutral.
These forests are not going togrow back in the state.
They're not going to go backfor tens or hundreds of years,
and they're never going to growback to the same majestic state
that we see them today, andtheir ability to store carbon,
(22:39):
therefore, has been severelydegraded.
And yeah, so it's like on thosethree counts, this is really
not a renewable source of energy, but, unfortunately, the
international climate and carbonaccounting rules have gone down
this path and allowed forcountries to not properly count
(22:59):
the carbon that's being emittedby their forest industry at a
country level.
So they're not really lookingat the soils, they're not
looking at all the dead woodthat could be slowly decomposing
in the forest and not emittingso much carbon.
They're instead saying, oh, youcould take all of that material
and burn it in a coal what wasa coal fire power station
(23:22):
somewhere overseas, and at thatlevel as well, they're not then
counting all of the emissionsthey're putting into the
atmosphere.
In fact they count it as carbonneutral.
So the burning still is likeretrograde in terms of the power
stations themselves.
The whole industrial revolutionwe came through using forests
(23:43):
for power, for making iron andall the rest, and for then
powering all kinds of industrialprocesses.
And then people realized, oh,there's coal, we could use that,
and it's we're.
Our forests are running out,let's switch to coal and oil.
This is a retrograde step andto be using the precious forests
(24:03):
we have here.
I think also the forestindustry here.
Forest workers who hear aboutthis are also shocked that the
resource that they feel they'vebeen building up is then being
cut, converted to pellets andburnt elsewhere as some kind of
false renewable energy solution.
So that's the situation we'rein, and, yeah, there are a lot
(24:27):
more angles to this.
And the thing that's, I thinkwe and other groups such as such
as the Wildlands League andmany others that have signed on
to a letter recently, have comeup against as the subsidies that
governments are giving to thisindustry.
Without the subsidies, it wouldappear that this whole industry
(24:50):
would be would not beprofitable.
So not only have we got thissubsidized renewable so-called
renewable energy solution, butwithout the subsidies it would
not be profitable, it would notbe a solution at all.
Wind, solar storage ofelectricity they're all coming
(25:10):
up and they're all becoming veryaffordable, and yet governments
are turning to this biomass asthe solution that they're
looking to, and so that's wherewe're really kind of scratching
our heads and trying to findways of letting people know that
this is not the way to go.
And yeah, we're going to degradeour forest even further if we
(25:32):
go down this path.
Janet Sumner (25:40):
Sorry, that's terrific.
I'm going to maybe spend sometime unpacking that a little bit
, but I just wanted tounderstand does the biomass
campaign overlap with the oldgrowth campaign?
Richard Robertson (25:52):
Yeah, that's a great question.
We are certainly looking to domore of that and get more
evidence that certainly we'vedone a lot of research already
to show that whole trees arecoming out of forests here in
British Columbia and going intothe pellet industry.
Tegan, maybe you could talk abit more to the potential links
(26:17):
and things.
You've gone and seen some ofthe work that's been done in
terms of the CLIFLs and thepellet mills and what's been in
our experience then.
Tegan Hansen (26:28):
Yeah, it's such an interesting question because of
course everything is connectedand certainly I think you can
see the chain.
The industry has shifted in BCand that itself is a connection
that underpins the campaign.
So in British Columbia, youknow, we're still seeing such a
boom and bust economy Somepeople have called it the
(26:51):
continuation of the gold rusheconomy and communities are
still really suffering from theimpacts of mills that continue
to curtail their shifts or shutdown completely after having
taken all of these resourcesfrom the local lands and then
kind of shutting down theiroperations and moving to places
like the US southeast, and inthere that gap that's created,
(27:13):
communities are looking to, well, what other opportunities are
there?
And the concern is, of course,that pellet plants have such a
different level of what they canaccept in terms of fiber.
So what you know traditionalmill needs a certain quality of
wood to turn into, you know,products like wood, products
(27:35):
that you might expect like twoby fours, as an example.
Well, pellet plants can usemore materials and so if a
traditional mill, a big companylike Kenfort West Treasure, has
cleared an area of what you knowthey can get and make a profit
off of from the forest, a pelletcompany might have more
(27:58):
opportunity to go in and stilllog other things that weren't
considered merchantable.
Yeah, but the thing that youknow Richard was also talking
about that we're struggling totrack is it is really hard to
get information from theprovince of BC, which really
should be tracking things likewhere this would go when it's
logged in a cut block.
It's really hard to actuallyfind that out without doing a
(28:22):
lot of really expensive research.
And so a third party contractormight go in and clear, cut a
block and they might do it underthe license of a big company or
the tenure of a really bigcompany that has a mill
somewhere.
But a certain number of thosetrees might be cut specifically
to go to a pellet plant if they,you know, log more or have
(28:43):
trees that aren't consideredmillable at that other mill.
So that's one piece that makesit quite difficult to track and
we have, you know, heard ofcases where places that were
marked as old growth wereawarded a license to a pellet
plant through BC's auctionsystems, so BC timber sales.
(29:06):
We've heard those stories butagain, it's hard to track
because when we've inquiredabout it, companies will often
claim that they'll sell the bigtrees to a mill to mill for
things like again, like your,two by fours, so without
actually being there on the landall the time and following
these tracks and I mean it's alot more complicated than that
(29:30):
but you can't actually tellwhere things are going.
And so that's one challengethat we've encountered with
pellet plants.
Now I have gone and visited,like Richard said, I've gone and
visited cut blocks that werelogged by a pellet company north
on the daycast territories,north of Prince George, and I've
seen pellet plants in BurnsLake in south of Prince George,
(29:57):
in these communities where youhave a pellet plant and a huge
yard just full of logs and youwalk the perimeter of that log
yard and you can see all logs ofall different species, some
that look totally healthy, somethat are bigger than you'd
expect, some that you're kind ofshocked to see that they're
about to be ground up and turnedinto pellets, some that you'd
(30:20):
be shocked to see in any logyard because you'd think that
that tree should have been leftstanding.
And that's the reality.
And then I think the other andwe can talk more about this.
The other thing we've beentalking a lot with our partners
and around BC is well what theprovince is signaling some very
(30:44):
concerning trends around theirresponse to wildfires and we've,
of course, just had the worstwildfire season on record in
British Columbia and we'realready getting signals, with
the winter that we're having,that there's going to be
potentially another recordbreaking fire season and some of
the subsidies that pelletplants get from the government
(31:05):
of British Columbia are gearfrom what we can tell.
Again, it's hard to getinformation, but from what we
can tell they're geared towardsfireproofing quote unquote
fireproofing communities so,which involves sometimes harvest
.
And what we're really worriedabout is that, without good
oversight and with reallydubious science and with a
(31:27):
province that's still strugglingto admit that, yes, well,
climate change is a huge factorinto why we're getting the fires
we're getting, forestry and thepractices of logging that have
gone on in this province for thelast number of decades is a
huge reason why we're gettingthe fires that we're getting and
the severity of fires and thesize of fires, and the province
(31:49):
is still reckoning with that andstruggling to admit its
complicity in that.
And so, seeing, with a lack ofoversight and the increased
logging that's also going tofeed pellet plants, you know,
under the guise of fireproofingand without being able to
evaluate are these goodpractices or not, and sometimes
they might be good practices andvery often they might not be.
(32:09):
That is a huge concern for usand, with the frankly, with so
little old growth left and withthe downturn in that sector, it
is a place where we're worriedabout the ramifications and
there's an inevitable overlap inour campaigns, because the
provincial response to oldgrowth and to revising,
(32:32):
hopefully, its management of oldgrowth for us, in partnership
with First Nations, will likelyhave some profound implications
for the wood pellet sector.
Kaya Adleman (32:44):
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we like making it?
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You can actually support ourwork by going to our website,
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(33:05):
description below.
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It seems or at least in myunderstanding of the overlap
between the two issues is thatthe justification for using wood
pellet as biomass for renewableenergy in air quotes is that
(33:25):
the pellets are a byproduct oflike mill waste and from what
you're saying, that's ultimatelynot always the case, or it's
hard to determine whether or notthat is the case.
Richard Robertson (33:40):
Yeah, well, it's getting easier to determine
whether that's the case.
The industry the industrycertainly takes a lot of what
they call mill waste.
But then if you say your saythe pellet mill is right next
door and this happens, a lot isright next door to a sawmill.
50% of the saw log is is termedwaste.
(34:04):
So this or the sawdust or the,or the kind of the I've got the
term now David where you takethe, the outside of the log off,
you square it off.
So yeah, my forestryterminology is right.
Yeah, okay, so the so a lot ofa lot of the log itself in terms
(34:29):
of the sawing process, themilling process, ends up being
termed as waste and the, thepellet industry, is then taking
that material.
So 50% of the log, and thatclearly is not waste, that's
going in back into the systemand it's, it's turning over a
(34:52):
profit, or at least a subsidizedprofit in the case of pellets.
So it can't be discounted andtreated as waste in this way,
and so then we're.
So that's some of the materialthat's going in.
Clearly, then the, the mills,are complicit and the UK, in
their sourcing, is out, holdsthem to be complicit.
(35:14):
They turn this as residues.
So even if the, the pellets aremade from this waste or residue
material, their responsibilityaccording to the UK
sustainability criteria is tostill look and say where did
this, where did this would comefrom?
Did it come from what we mightterm a high conservation value
forest and all growth forest?
And this and the likelihood ofthat happening when you're
(35:39):
sourcing from a, from a log yardor that, where there's logs
coming in from a huge area andand the soulmail is taking in
everything that they can get andlegally taking all growth
forest is very high.
The chances of you getting allgrowth in there is super high.
So that, yeah, trying to tracethat back and to demonstrate
(36:02):
from a forest to the pellet,this is all growth forest is, is
clearly very difficult thing todo, and not only for us but
also for the industry.
Trying to try to show, oh yeah,we're all sustainable, we're
doing the right thing.
I don't see how they can showthat and that's that's a big gap
in their sustainability claims,if you like, and I think that's
(36:23):
something that we in the futurewould would certainly like to
look more deeply into.
Kaya Adleman (36:30):
Do you think other developed countries who are
looking to source biomass fromCanada choose to do so because
of the image that Canada is aleader in sustainable forest
management and that they feelsafe doing so?
There's the underlyingassumption that it will satisfy
(36:53):
any sustainability guidelines orrequirements that those
countries might haveindividually.
Richard Robertson (37:01):
Yeah, I think so.
I think the way that Canada hasbeen selling itself as having a
sustainable forest industry andwe are seen as a very green
country in terms of our forestry, yeah, that's certainly been a
factor in countries like the UKand now Japan taking timber from
(37:22):
here and believing that it'ssourced from forests that are
going to go on forever, andthey're certainly not going on
forever in the state that theywere, even a few decades ago.
We've seen a huge amount ofdegradation in the forests here.
That's the real picture andthat's the picture that we and
(37:46):
partners, engos around thecountry are trying to paint and
depict.
Unfortunately, yeah, thegovernment is still trying to
define for themselves whatdegradation is, but they're
coming up against Europe, whichEuropean regulators are saying
now that they will not acceptwood from degradation and
(38:06):
deforestation.
So those two things together.
Also at the recent COP, whichwe might want to talk a bit more
about, there was mention in thepapers that came out of that,
the announcements, theagreements that they made, that
forest degradation was notacceptable and that biomass was
(38:30):
also had to look to that andunderstand yeah, this is not the
way to be going.
Janet Sumner (38:47):
I'm going to geek out a bit with you, Richard.
Right now I want to just talkabout biomass and some of the
carbon exchanges.
And so we've worked a littlebit on biomass and I'll just be
very clear Wildlands League isof the opinion that biomass can
work in very limited situations.
(39:08):
For example, if you're trulyusing mill waste, maybe heat the
mill that you're working in.
That's when you could saybiomass, because it is a waste
product that was produced bythat mill and you were going to
use it.
You'd still have to go back andprove that the forest that you
harvested was being sustainablyharvested, which is another
(39:29):
question entirely.
But just to put that on thetable, we're not ideologically
opposed that biomass can never,ever, ever, ever work.
We're just saying that there'ssome clear definitions around
that.
So somebody cuts a tree down,it goes to a mill.
Some of the planning of thatplank to get it to be square
(39:54):
from a round tree creates somewaste, and that waste in the
sawdust goes where?
Because I'm assuming it's kindof wet wood.
Is that correct?
Where does that go?
Richard Robertson (40:14):
Yeah, so there are lots of different
potential uses for thatso-called waste.
Janet Sumner (40:23):
But doesn't it have to get dried out at some
point?
Richard Robertson (40:25):
That's true.
Yeah, so that's another aspectof the industry as well Drying
pellets.
It varies as to how they drypellets, so different pellet
mills will do it in differentways.
But sometimes they use gas, sothey're emitting.
Yeah, they're using a highcarbon fuel to dry, so do we?
Janet Sumner (40:50):
count that?
When we look at the pelletslike, is that carbon that was
used to dry that fuel source?
Does that get counted into thecarbon equation?
Richard Roberts (40:58):
Internationally they're supposed to, yeah, so,
from the mills here.
So there's one big companyactually, which we haven't named
yet, and that company is Drax.
So Drax is the name of a tinylittle village, originally in
Yorkshire, and that is where oneof the biggest I think is the
(41:19):
biggest what was the coal-firedpower station in Europe is
situated, and it's bigger thanactually that in terms of
megawatts it's bigger thananything in here in Canada and
in the US from what I've seen.
So it's a huge facility.
They're taking all the pelletsfrom here to there.
(41:41):
In terms of greenhouse gasemissions and in terms of the
UK's sustainability criteria,they're supposed to measure
every single operation thatmight add to or subtract from
more likely add to thegreenhouse gas emissions.
So the drying process itselfshould be counted within that.
(42:02):
And, yeah, there's someevidence recently published to
show that they're not reportingvery well on this and therefore
the regulations aren't beingvery well enforced in terms of
the drying processes and theemissions that are coming out of
(42:22):
some of these mills.
And then they have to ship it,and then there's the shipping.
Janet Sumner (42:29):
So that's got to require some emissions.
Is that counted as well?
Richard Robertson (42:35):
That also should be counted.
Yeah, that's also added intothe equation.
And so, yeah, from here to theUK.
Well, if we fly, it's 6,000miles, right, is it miles or
kilometers?
Janet Sumner (42:52):
I don't know I haven't mentioned it lately, but
that's a heck of a flight.
Richard Robertson (42:57):
Yeah, but if you, in order to take the
pellets, they have to go aroundand down through the Panama
Canal or wherever the route, andit's more like 12,000
kilometers, so it's a long wayto go and there's a lot of
emissions involved in thatprocess as well.
So yeah, the drying process,the cutting in the forest
process and the emissions thatcome from that, it all should be
(43:22):
and generally is accounted forin that process, but still, at
the other end, they don't countthe emissions at the coal stack,
if you like, so at the powerstation.
Janet Sumner (43:37):
So then it gets to Drax, they burn it and the
emissions that come out of thesmoke stack are not counted.
Richard Robertson (43:45):
That's what you're saying they're not
counted.
They're not counted as neutralat that point.
Janet Sumner (43:51):
And it's also assumed to be neutral at that
point, because you're going tobe able to regrow the forest
right, that Canada's forest andforestry is sustainable, so we
basically sustain our forest, soit's no problem.
Richard Robertson (44:03):
That's the assumption.
Yeah, and sadly, from the workwe've done on forest degradation
and the state of the forestreport, the alternative that we
launched, that's clearly not thecase.
We've been trying to point thatout that these forests are not
going to grow back in timeeither.
The assumption yeah, if we'relooking at 2030 to be carbon
(44:27):
neutral as a grand kind of inthe grand scheme of things, a
grand target, 2030, the forestthat we're taking from right now
, there's no way that they'regoing to grow back in.
What is that now?
Four or five years, six years?
Janet Sumner (44:43):
So you've cut down a let's talk about a young tree
.
In BC terms, You've cut down a200-year-old tree.
You've turned it into how let's, you've shipped it around the
planet.
They've burned it.
It's carbon neutral and ifthere was, if the assumption was
correct that you could regrowin a sustainable way and that
(45:05):
tree was to come back, carbonneutrality for all intents and
purposes would be reached in 200years.
Richard Robertson (45:14):
That's the assumption, but then the science
further shows that taking thoselarge trees out, those large
trees and this is something thatscience has not been fully
clear on until fairly recentlymore recent research would say
that a large tree is actuallyabsorbing increasingly over its
lifetime.
(45:34):
As it gets bigger, it'sincreasingly absorbing more
carbon than a whole hectaresworth of small trees that might
surround it.
So what we're experiencing hereis our forest getting a lot
younger as well.
So over the landscape we've gotthese very young forests maybe
(45:55):
to 60, 70 years before they comearound and harvest them again.
That's those trees and thesoils and the ecology within
there.
There's no way that that'sgoing to store the same amount
of carbon as an ancient veterantree within an old growth forest
setting.
(46:15):
So, yeah, the way they'reaccounting really does not take
into account the natural stateof things and this huge carbon
sink that we naturally have here.
Janet Sumner (46:30):
I was trying to bait you into saying what I'm
thinking, which is, I'm willingto accept your carbon neutrality
if it's out to 200 years.
If you want to treat these ascarbon neutral, let's treat them
by 200 years, which means we'vewell and truly missed our 2050
target.
And so if you can find me a wayto grow a 200-year-old tree in
(46:52):
eight years or four years, giveme a shout, because I think
that's impossible.
Richard Robertson (46:57):
We're way off on our targets.
You're right.
It may be that certaincommunities and First Nations
communities, who are very remoteand rely on diesel, say, for
example, for their power, it maybe in some cases more efficient
for them to be using materialsthat come from their own sawing
(47:23):
and milling operations, and evenin those cases, I think to
think of it as carbon neutral isprobably not the right thinking
.
It might be that it's a sourceof energy for them, but to think
of it in those terms of this isgoing to grow back and we're
going to become carbon neutral.
(47:43):
Sadly, this is not really thecase, and I'd hope that the
government can look more tofunding solar, wind-powered and
ways of storing electricity thatcan help communities such as
these.
But some cases, yeah, they maystill have to fall back on
biomass, but then again, it'sheavily subsidized and if
(48:10):
subsidies dry up, then thesecommunities might also be in
further trouble if they thenfind themselves having to pay
quite high prices.
The international market,unfortunately, for pellets is
growing and, yeah, the pricefluctuates a lot and a lot of
companies that have set up inthis business.
(48:32):
So there's two really big onesthat I can think of Drax, that
operate a lot here and a companycalled Enviva who really
dominated the United States.
And Enviva are on the brink ofcollapse financially.
Their shares have fallen reallydramatically over the last six
(48:56):
months and they're now beingquestioned as to whether they
should be on the stock exchange,even because of the state the
company's in, yeah, and thesecompanies.
There's a lot of reasons whythat's happened, but these
companies are very heavilyreliant on subsidies, and those
subsidies come from ourgovernments and they're
(49:19):
justified by them, as this falseclimate solution has been
contributing towards carbonneutrality, and so, yeah, that's
.
The problem we're confrontedwith here is that it's being
used almost as an excuse to keepcutting the forests, and that's
(49:39):
really not the kind of climatesolution that we should be
looking to.
Kaya Adleman (49:50):
All right, janet, that was a very, very
interesting conversation that wehad with Richard and Tegan, and
yeah.
So, as for my key takeaways, Ithink it's very interesting I
think we've heard this too alittle bit in the episode that
(50:11):
we did with Peter Wood but kindof how the underlying frame in
British Columbia is to kind ofcontinue to log the forests in
British Columbia and how there'skind of these insidious ways in
which the action of continuingto log forests in BC is being
posed as a climate solution.
(50:32):
It's being treated as a way tomanage in quotes for insect
infestations, to be used as away to suppress or mitigate
wildfires.
Now is being used as a way tooffer a solution to the reliance
on fossil fuels as a source ofenergy.
(50:53):
So this conversation for me hasbeen very emblematic of the
ways in which we're still seeingbusiness as usual approaches
under a more polished lensthat's more palatable for the
public.
Janet Sumner (51:10):
It's a great rebranding exercise.
Yes, right, like it's a pivot.
We're going to rebrand.
We're not taking trees, we'reactually creating biomass.
It'll help solve the energytransition and guess what?
It's climate neutral.
So it's actually really.
It's amazing how that pivot canhappen and I think for many
(51:32):
people who are in busy lives, wethink, oh great, somebody's
helping solve the climate changeproblem and we want that, we
deeply want that we have.
You know, a lot of people aredeeply concerned and have grief,
and kids and older people andparents are concerned about the
(51:52):
climate.
They see it, they feel it, andso people who are saying that
we've got some solutions.
It seems like it's great newsand there's a sense of relief.
We have that same problem on,you know, mining for critical
minerals, as if it's.
You know, we're going toelectrify all cars with these
critical minerals.
But heck, where do they comefrom, and how we're mining and
(52:13):
what we're mining and thelandscape that we leave behind.
Does that have actually acarbon impact?
We've got, you know, the ringof fire, or the proposed ring of
fire, which is in this enormouspeatland complex that contains
billions of tons of carbon.
Well, that's not going to becarbon neutral.
Yet, you know we seem to.
This rebranding exercise thatindustry and government seem to
(52:36):
be able to do is very convincing.
And I think the other thing thatis reliant here in terms of the
wood pellets is that we've hada hundred years of fire
suppression, where we've beendeliberately suppressing fire.
So now it's like, oh, let's getin there and log it so we can
prevent fires.
Well, it, it, it.
That's all built up because weactually stopped the natural
(52:58):
process.
And the other thing I found veryinteresting of what Richard was
saying is that 50% of a saw logis deemed waste.
And then the other thing thathappens for me is that 50% of a
saw log has an economic valuebecause now it's getting turned
into wood pellets.
So we're harvesting and 50% ofthat log is being used for
(53:20):
biomass.
In other words, it might havenot been economically feasible
to take that tree down if wedidn't have the marketplace for
biomass.
And then, yeah, I guess we'rewe're hearing that it's that one
of the unintended consequencesof the climate agreements is
(53:41):
that we're trying to, you know,triple our renewable energy, and
so that gets us into how do weget more biomass?
Or people are seeing this as amarket opportunity.
So those are all things thatstruck me from our conversation.
Kaya Adleman (53:56):
Yeah, I think what was also interesting to me is
this idea that the biomassthat's being shipped to other
countries from Canada issupposedly meeting all of these
individual countries likesustainability guidelines for
clean fuels, and I think thatalso just speaks to the kind of
(54:19):
veneer of sustainable forestmanagement in Canada that it's
okay to take wood pellets as asource of renewable energy from
Canada because it's a it's aleader in sustainable forest
management.
Janet Sumner (54:34):
Well, we have a roaring second episode coming up
, so I know that people will bedelighted to listen to that as
well, because it's it gets intothe COP and other issues, and so
I'm looking forward to thesecond part of this.
Kaya Adleman (54:46):
Yeah, me too.
Janet Sumner (54:50):
If you like listening to the clear cut and
want to keep the content coming,support the show.
It would mean a lot to Kai andI.
The link to do so will be inthe episode description below.
Kaya Adleman (55:01):
You can also become a supporter by going to
our website atwwwwildlandsleagueorg.
Slash the clear cut and alsomake sure to leave us a review
on your favorite podcaststreaming platform.
It would really help thepodcast and stay tuned for new
episodes by following us onsocial media.
Janet Sumner (55:22):
Links at wwwwildlandsleagueorg on
Instagram, Twitter and Facebook,or LinkedIn, of course.
Kaya Adleman (55:28):
See you next time.
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