Thursday 17 September 2009

Build with Wood to Save the Climate? Perhaps, if the Forests are Managed Properly

Cutting down forests is environmentally sound? Well, it depends how you do it and what you use its products for, it seems. A new initiative by the forest industries in Quebec, supported by scientific reports, argues that replacing steel and concrete in construction would go a long way toward more ecological construction projects. The idea is that well-managed forests are renewable and become carbon dioxide sinks, while both concrete and steel use large quantities of non-renewable resources including energy from petroleum in their production.

The campaign sounds a bit self-serving, since the forest industries have been suffering mightily during the current economic hard times. But in principle, the use of wood does make sense. The devil is in the details, of course, and unless increased use of forest products for construction is accompanied by really good reforestation and forest management policies, nothing will be gained. As Le Devoir’s Louis-Gilles Francoeur notes, the campaign is being launched just after the appearance of a big UN report charging that deforestation is the cause of more greenhouse gas emissions than the entire transportation system on the planet.

Worth following, though.

3 comments:

Martin Langeland said...

Details indeed.
Too often the industry's method has been to replace complex eco-systems, e.g.: old growth forest, with mono-crop tree farms which are clearcut far too often to sequester much carbon. Solid and durable wood construction -- think fitted post and beam rather than quick and dirty balloon-frame made, now, of mostly composites -- would be more helpful. Problems: It requires skill and time to build them. Profit margins are less.
Urban density for walkable cities is a lot more problematic with wood as opposed to steel and concrete.
The real problem remains that the carrying capacity of Gaia is less than the present population. Our fixes for that are too destructive to sustain. The only viable solution to that that I see is to do with less consumption of non-durables. But who will tell us children so we understand?
--ml

Mary Soderstrom said...

You are absolutely right about needing to cut down on our consumption. But many walkable areas of cities were built with wood: our neighborhood is all wood frame with brick facing dating from before World War I. Going up is not necessary for walkability, but living close together is.

Monoculture is a grave problem, I agree, though.

Martin Langeland said...

Opps! Too busy thinking about old town city brick rowhouses, so I forgot about the many walkable western cities with frame houses next to each other cheek by jowl. Still, The balloon frame was a dangerous shortcut resorted to first after the Chicago Fire. We,ve piled up a lot of building codes since trying to make it safer.
--ml