Alexander C. Kaufman
@kaufman
This is a pretty good breakdown of the insanity that is the transatlantic wood pellet energy trade. U.N. carbon accounting rules count the CO2 from losing a tree in the country where it’s cut down. So when American trees are milled into pill-sized pellets and shipped to, for example, England to be burned in a power plant, the British can claim its carbon-free power — even though they’re burning twice as much to compensate for the more energy-dense coal they’re replacing. This scam has been allowed to continue, however, in part because the typical pro-climate bloc in Europe — ie Nordic countries — all have big timber industries and haven’t wanted to crack down on a market. Meanwhile, the heavily-polluting pellet mills processing all these old-growth forests being felled in the American South are overwhelmingly located in poor, rural and mostly Black towns.
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erica
@erica
how is felling old growth forests even remotely green 💀
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Alexander C. Kaufman
@kaufman
Because an accounting loophole makes it so 🙃
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@m-j-r.eth
I've been trying to rediscover this... there's a short essay/story out there of what happens when a tree falls and the canopy breaks, leading to living tapestry of ecological succession. all sorts of green organisms manifesting in a newly sunlit patch, until successive waves of trees regenerate the canopy. obviously I'm not advocating for industrial scale power generation, but there's an argument to be made that we can be greener than nature intends.
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