It has become a principle of the environmental movement to insist that wood and paper products be certified as originating from sustainably managed forests. They even created their own organization, the Forest Stewardship Council, to make the rules and hand out the certificates. And Lord help those who don’t fall in line, as big-box retailers and builders found out when Greenpeace and the Rainforest Action Network became their judge and juryÑhanging corporate reputations from the rafters with the TV cameras rolling.
This appears very green and politically correct on the surface; but as with so many environmental issues, it’s not that simple, and the result may damage the environment rather than improve it.
As an idea, certification is an excellent way to provide independent verification of compliance with sound principles of sustainability. The consumer doesn’t have to trust the manufacturer because third-party audits are used to test claims made about the product, much in the same way protective helmets or small appliances carry safety seals from a certifying body. If only forest product certification were working this way in the real world. Instead, the environmental movement’s campaign to force industry into accepting them as the only arbiter of sustainable forestry is pushing consumers away from renewable forest products towards non-renewable, energy-intensive materials such as steel, concrete and plastic. This is happening for two reasons.
First, anti-forestry groups such as the Sierra Club and Greenpeace make endless and unreasonable demands restricting forest practices. This is mainly why less than 2% of the wood and paper produced in North America has been certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. Meanwhile, the same environmental groups refuse to recognize other legitimate certification programs such as the Canadian Standards Association and the U.S. Sustainable Forestry Initiative even though both include independent audits of sustainable forestry and have collectively certified the largest area of managed forests in the worldÑover 200 million acres so far. They won’t even acknowledge that there are some regionsÑlike CaliforniaÑwhere strict government regulations meet or exceed guidelines imposed by the Forest Stewardship Council. This situation has led the U.S. Green Building Council to adopt a policy that eliminates 98% of the wood produced in North America from recognition in their program.
Second, even though wood is proven to be the most renewable and sustainable of the major building materials, it is required to meet a much higher test for sustainability than other materials. On all measures comparing the environmental effects of common building materials, wood has the least impact on total energy use, greenhouse gases, air and water pollution, solid waste and ecological resource use. So, why isn’t the environmental movement demanding that the steel and concrete industries submit to an independent audit for Òsustainability?Ó Where’s the green steel, concrete and plastic? These materials are all non-renewable, require vast amounts of energy to manufacture and are major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions.
Steel’s environmental defense is that it is recyclable. That’s great, except we never hear about the massive amounts of energy needed to melt scrap steel in electric-arc furnaces. Concrete doesn’t have an environmental leg to stand on. Wood, on the other hand, is produced in forests by renewable solar energy.
Why shouldn’t steel and concrete manufacturers be required to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions or face boycotts, demonstrations, bans and restrictions? Why does the environmental movement stand silent in the face of aggressive promotional campaigns by steel and concrete that leverage mythical environmental claims against wood for their own commercial benefit? Because emotive images of forests sell memberships whereas steel and concrete are cold and boring.
The environmental movement has unfortunately led the public into believing that when they use wood they cause the loss of forests. This widespread guilt is entirely misplaced. In his book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, Danish scholar Bjorn Lomborg has clearly demonstrated that North America’s forests are not disappearing as is commonly alleged. In fact, there is about the same amount of forest cover today as there was 100 years ago even though we consume more wood per capita than any other region in the world. Isn’t this proof positive that forests are renewable and sustainable?
The fact is that when we buy wood we are sending a signal to plant more trees to satisfy demand. If there were no demand for wood, then landowners would clear away the forest and grow something else instead. That’s the opposite of what science tells us is good for the environment.
One of the most powerful tools at our disposal to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and the threat of climate change is to grow more trees and then use more wood as a substitute for the very fossil fuels and materials, like steel and concrete, that are responsible for excessive emissions in the first place. If only the environmental movement would recognize this one fact, it would turn their anti-forestry policy on its head and redirect membership dollars to where they are most neededÑpromoting sound environmental choices.
Dr. Patrick Moore has been a leader in the international environmental field for over 30 years. He is a founding member of Greenpeace and in 2000 published Green Spirit: Trees are the Answer, providing new insight into how forests work and can play a powerful role in solving many of our current environmental problems.
