Greetings Earthlings. Did you learn about The Great Chicago
or San Francisco Fires in history class? Those disasters led the construction
industries in the U.S. to move away from building large urban structures out of
wood. Guess what? Some folks on the UMass, Amherst campus want to turn the
clock back and do it all over again? Not everyone is on board and in these days
of Climate Crisis do we really want to keep cutting down trees that capture CO2
emissions?? Micheal Kellett of Restore the North Woods returns to the show to
deconstruct Mass Timber with us.We'll devote the entire hour to our interview
with Micheal so the only place you'll find your favorite Enviro show segments
will be right here on the blog. We'll get into all that presently but first it's
time for...........Revenge of the Critters! You think coronavirus is bad? Wait
until you find out about the Pangola threat.
This week's Fool-on-the-Hill is not only a complete fool but
he's also dangerous! Yes, it's Kentucky senator #MoscowMitchMcTraitor who said
this about the Green New Deal last year in February:
"It's clear what we have here. It's the far-left's
Santa Claus wish list dressed up to look like serious policy," McConnell
said. "Bad ideas are nothing new… silly proposals come and go. But the
philosophies and the ideas behind this textbook socialism are not just foolish.
They're dangerous."
Next to The Mad King, #MoscowMitchMcTraitor is the actual
greatest and gravest threat to our nation and the planet.
And now, on to that other greatest and gravest threat, His
Malignancy The Mad King who, before declaring himself the nation's chief lawenforcement officer, recently pardoned some of the worst people on Earth. We're
wondering why His Malignancy hasn't yet pardoned General Zod from his
imprisonment in the Phantom Zone or The Joker from Arkham State Hospital? And
this from Grist: The Mad King's "proposed budget for fiscal year 2021, a
“Budget for America’s Future,” aims to slash funding for 14 different climate
programs. And that’s just at the [highly compromised] Environmental Protection
Agency." Meanwhile, some of His Malignancy's climate criminal enablers
granted Keystone XL some of the final permits needed from the Department of the Interior’s Bureau
of Land Management, and the Army Corps of Engineers. TC Energy says it will
start clearing trees and mowing grass in the pipeline’s right-of-way this
March. With agencies issuing the final permits and TC Energy poised to break
ground, the tribes along with the Indigenous Environmental Network are likely
to ask for a new injunction, and may have a better chance of getting one.
Finally, The Mad King's Environmental "Protection"Agency effort to
change a rule that cuts emissions of mercury and other toxins is “an action
that is entirely unnecessary, unreasonable, and universally opposed by the
power generation sector”, according to the polluters themselves?
Our Enviro Show Quote of the Week comes from our favorite
congressman: "“While the President and his allies do everything in their
power to undermine our environmental protections as a favor to big oil
lobbyists and corporate polluters, we are prioritizing conserving and
protecting our delicate ecosystems like never before. I proudly voted yes on
this important bill [Protecting America’s Wilderness Act (H.R. 2546)] to
protect our wilderness – and our planet – for generations to come.” - Jim
McGovern
Time to remind your distracted friends and neighbors:
"It's the Climate Crisis, Stupid!" Not sure if telling them the dailyaverage of CO2 levels on Feb. 10 was 416.08 parts per million thus crossing
another grim doomsday threshold. Maybe something more in their face like:
"Overlapping environmental crises could tip the planet into "globalsystemic collapse", more than 200 top scientists warned"? Too extreme? How about Maybe we can fix
recycling? And this: Why the
Repugnicans won't act on the Climate Crisis!
Let's head over to the Bus Stop Billboard and see what else
we can do:
Thursday March 5, 10:30am to 1pm. A meeting of the DCR Stewardship Council. This meeting will be held at Holyoke Heritage State Park, 221 Appleton Street, Holyoke, MA.
Thursday March 5, 5:30pm Susan Masino: "Proforestation for People and the Planet," Everyone is welcome. Just got scheduled. 5:30 pm in McConnell 103, Smith College, Northampton, MA. Feel free to share. Proforestation for people and the planet. Forests evolved before dinosaurs. They protect biodiversity, clean our water and air, and mitigate multiple effects of climate change. Massachusetts is blessed with incredible forests and other natural areas, and protecting natural ecosystems has never been more important. We know we also need places for respite, and new research shows that forests support our health – especially brain health. It is urgent to heed new science so we can strike a balance among responsible resource use, high quality long-term research, and proforestation – a nature based solution that protects ecosystems and maximizes benefits for people and for the planet.
Saturday, March 7, 9am. Local Environmental Action 2020 will
bring hundreds of activists together to learn, connect and be inspired in
Boston, Mass. Go to: http://www.localenvironmentalaction.org/
Restore our Ecosystems, Restore our Earth session at 11AM.
[Good opportunity to bring up forest protection & preservation!] “One
of the most devastating impacts of climate change is the destruction of our
natural ecosystems. However, restoration is possible! Come to learn from
activists across Massachusetts on the work they have done to rehabilitate and
recover damaged ecosystems. Join us to find resources, partners, and first
steps towards restoring ecosystems in your community.”
Friday, March 13, 2 – 4:00 P.M. Neonics Scientific Literature Review Public Hearing.
Notice is hereby given that the Pesticide Board Subcommittee, acting through the Department of Agricultural Resources...will hold a public hearing on the findings of a scientific literature review that the Pesticide Board Subcommittee will use when determining whether current uses of neonicotinoid insecticides pose unreasonable adverse effects to the environment as well as pollinators, and whether current registered uses of neonicotinoid insecticides should be altered. Massachusetts Division of Fish & Wildlife, 1 Rabbit Hill Road, Westborough, MA 01581. For special accommodations for this event or to obtain this information in an alternative format, you may contact ADA coordinator, Donald Gomes, at 617-626-1608.
Tuesday March 17, 7 to 9:30pm. Third Tuesday Greenfield Word. Ides of March readings by d.o. from The Enviro Show. Also readings by Rosie McMahan. 9 Mill Street, Greenfield, MA. Go down the hill towards the Olver Transportation center Under the Railroad bridge. At the light take a right turn and it is the first building on the right. If driving park in the street or down three buildings in the Art center parking lot. Go to: https://www.facebook.com/events/3632904063474960/
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Friday, March 13, 2 – 4:00 P.M. Neonics Scientific Literature Review Public Hearing.
Notice is hereby given that the Pesticide Board Subcommittee, acting through the Department of Agricultural Resources...will hold a public hearing on the findings of a scientific literature review that the Pesticide Board Subcommittee will use when determining whether current uses of neonicotinoid insecticides pose unreasonable adverse effects to the environment as well as pollinators, and whether current registered uses of neonicotinoid insecticides should be altered. Massachusetts Division of Fish & Wildlife, 1 Rabbit Hill Road, Westborough, MA 01581. For special accommodations for this event or to obtain this information in an alternative format, you may contact ADA coordinator, Donald Gomes, at 617-626-1608.
Monday, March 16, 6-7:30pm. Join the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs for
a series of public meetings on the Commonwealth’s planning efforts to
address climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Guided by
the 2008 Global Warming
Solutions Act, Massachusetts is currently studying how to achieve the
ambitious climate goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. [Whoa! Sorry, we don't have the luxury of 30 YEARS!] Springfield Technical Community College. Registration link:
https://
Tuesday March 17, 7 to 9:30pm. Third Tuesday Greenfield Word. Ides of March readings by d.o. from The Enviro Show. Also readings by Rosie McMahan. 9 Mill Street, Greenfield, MA. Go down the hill towards the Olver Transportation center Under the Railroad bridge. At the light take a right turn and it is the first building on the right. If driving park in the street or down three buildings in the Art center parking lot. Go to: https://www.facebook.com/events/3632904063474960/
Saturday, March 28, 9am to 2pm.
Traprock will mark the 40th anniversary of Women and Life on Earth: a
conference on eco-feminism in the 1980's with a meeting in the Greenfield
Community College Dining Commons. The Women and Life on Earth conference in
March 1980 brought together 600 women from the northeastern U.S. for a weekend on connections around
women, peace and ecology. Now, at a critical time for life on earth, we gather
to honor and encourage multigenerational action. This event will bring together
activists and groups from Springfield, MA to Brattleboro, VT, to share goals
and plans for 2020 and beyond. Please join us! Contact: info@wloe.org
-->Sunday April 5, 4-6 pm. Extinction Rebellion WMass general meeting at Smith Campus Center, 100 Elm St, Northampton, MA 01063. Go to: https://www.xrwesternmass.org/
That's it 'til next time just remember to listen to your
Mother.....Got it?
1 comment:
• Lack of Adequate Study on Full Environmental Impacts of “Mass Timber”
Robbins, Jim. 9 April 2019. As Mass Timber Takes Off, How Green Is This New Building Material?
YaleEnvironment360. https://e360.yale.edu/features/as-mass-timber-takes-off-how-green-is-this-new-building-material
But there are big questions being asked about just how sustainable the new building material is –especially about how forests that produce mass timber are managed, and how much CO2 would be emitted in the logging, manufacture, and transport of the wood products used in the construction. So far, critics say, there aren’t good answers to these questions.
“We want to debunk the myth that mass timber is in any way, shape, or form related to some kind of environmental benefit,” said John Talberth, president of the Center for Sustainable Economy, which is based near Portland. “That’s simply not true.”…
The forest products industry is already the largest source of CO2 emissions in Oregon because of fuel burned by logging equipment and hauling trucks, the burning of wood, and the decomposition of trees after they are cut.
Beverly Law, a professor of global change biology and terrestrial systems science at Oregon State University who headed up the Oregon forest study, says there hasn’t been a thorough analysis of carbon emitted by mass timber production because it is enormously complex to track the factors that produce CO2 in forest ecosystems and in production. Some of the data needed, she said, is incomplete or absent. It took her team of researchers more than a decade of analysis to figure out that the Oregon wood products industry was the largest emitter of CO2 in the state, Law said.
“We looked at long- and short-term products, what mills burn for heat, fuel burned for harvesting, transporting from forest to mills to end use, and emissions along the way,” she said. Another major issue is how long the wood will be in use, which is not yet known. In addition, Law said, any analysis of CO2 must account for how much the forest is taking up before and after logging, “and a lot of people don’t pay attention to that part of it. We just don’t have the information to run this through a life cycle assessment.”
The forestry part is what has some skeptical of how ecologically sound mass timber is and, if and when it’s scaled up, whether it will truly provide a planetary climate solution. In a letter to the city of Portland last year, representatives of Oregon environmental groups — including the Audubon Society, the Sierra Club, and Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility — raised serious doubts about mass timber as a green climate solution and questioned the city’s plan to use it.
First and foremost, they said, is the need to certify that wood is logged sustainably and certified as such. “Without such a requirement,” the letter stated, the city “may be encouraging the already rampant clear-cutting of Oregon’s forests… In fact, because it can utilize smaller material than traditional timber construction, it may provide a perverse incentive to shorten logging rotations and more aggressively clear-cut.”
Such industrial-type forestry — large-scale plantings of trees selected to grow fast — creates a “biological desert,” said Talberth, of the Center for Sustainable Economy. “And it’s driving the extinction of thousands of species. Mass timber is mass extinction.”
“We must ensure that mass timber drives sustainable forestry management, otherwise all of these benefits are lost,” agreed Mark Wishnie, director of forestry and wood products at The Nature Conservancy. “To really understand the potential impact of the increased use of mass timber on climate we need to conduct a much more detailed set of analyses.”
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