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Stop burning trees and coal

Many things need urgent attention if we want to protect the biosphere, but two stand out: trees and

coal. Both are part of the natural cycle which we all sketched at school: trees use sunlight to takecarbon out of the air, and return that carbon to the Earth partly as coal as they decay. But the

rate at which we are now burning the trees and the coal is pushing us towards unnatural

disaster.

Forests, particularly tropical ones, are the worlds last, best and cheapest insurance policy against

climate change and species extinction. They are ancient, complex ecosystems which store water and

regulate rainfall and are home to perhaps half the worlds plant and animal species. We are destroying

them at an alarming rate, however: deforestation and new land cultivation accounts for almost 20 per

cent of the worlds greenhouse gas emissions each year. Thats more than is produced by every car,

ship, lorry and aircraft on the planet. Its more than is produced by either the US or China. We cannot

combat climate change if we keep destroying forests.

If trees are an insurance policy, coal is the fuel which could really burn the house down. Coal is the

dirtiest and most plentiful of the fossil fuels. It is also the cheapest a dirty trick played on us by

Naturewhich is why it is the fastest growing fuel in the world. It provides almost 30 per cent of the

worlds energy and half of Americas electricity-generating capacity. The world is set to use a great

deal of coal in the next 20 years, according to the International Energy Agency; about half of it in

China and Indiabut if we burn all the coal in the ground, without trapping the carbon dioxide, we

could face runaway climate change.

It is the potential irreversibility of the process that is most alarming. At some level, most of us

understand that the complex ecosystems we have taken for granted are fundamental to our survival. In

the past 18 months, debates about whether the climate is warming have given way to the realisation

that change is happening faster than most scientists had expected. As the white, reflective Arctic sea

ice melts, the dark ocean absorbs more sunlight, accelerating the melting. If the permafrost on land

thaws it will release methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, which would in turn cause more warming.

Tipping points such as these could turn global warming into mankinds biggest mistake, with

consequences visible from the moon.

We find it hard to contemplate the enormity of these changes, to comprehend our place in the natural

cycle, to act on problems that are so much bigger than we are. In our daily lives we continue to make

choices that move the dial another fraction in the wrong direction. We write cheques to save cutemonkeys from extinction, but buy soap made from palm oil, the production of which has devastated

the forests where the monkeys lived. We show off the cloth bags we bought to reduce waste, then fill

them with plastic bottles containing water we could have drunk free from the tap, knowing that the

bottles will be shipped to China and burnt. This cognitive dissonance so terribly human is

exacerbated because climate change is an international problem, which must be solved globally. So

we are always looking to someone else to solve it.

Were going to have to stop waiting for someone else to act. The solutions must come from the West;

not just because the bulk of the man-made greenhouse gases still in the atmosphere were put there by

the British, American and German industrial revolutions, but also because we have the most money

and know-how. Indonesia is going to keep clearing forests to make way for agricultural land until itbecomes more profitable to preserve the trees. China and India will build more dirty coal plants until

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cleaner ones become financially viable. The big questions are how the industrialised West is going to

find the money to get the industrialising nations to do the right thing, and how to ensure that the

money actually achieves the objective.

ENDING DEFORESTATION There is currently no value attached to a live tree, standing on peat-rich

soil, in a tropical rainforest. A pile of dead timber is profitable and so is a patch of cultivatable land.So how do we change things so that trees are worth more alive than they are dead?

First, forests need to be part of any new climate change regime. Second, countries need to be paid for

them. Various proposals are under discussion, mostly variations on the theme of letting countries

claim carbon credits for valuable trees, which they could then trade. The Prince of Wales has

suggested issuing rainforest bonds that could attract private sector capital, particularly from pension

funds. Those bonds would be guaranteed by developed nations. Satellite monitoring means that it is

easier than it might seem to check whether a country has fulfilled its promises to preserve trees. The

Brazilian space agency already publishes regular, detailed pictures of the Amazon, and it has offered

to make its technology available to other rainforest nations.

The biggest problems lie elsewhere. First, it is questionable to what extent many governments actually

control their forests. Most will have to build partnerships involving federal, state and municipal

authorities, plus local people and business interests. That is a challenge. Second, there is a real danger

that issuing vast numbers of cheap credits for forests will kill the global carbon price.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article6382124.ece

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article6382124.ecehttp://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article6382124.ecehttp://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article6382124.ece