The Giving Trees

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Customers who pay for offsets at van Eck "are buying a product that has already been developed, delivered, registered, and certified," Wayburn says. "The carbon is already there on the ground." That may sound good, but it's a roundabout way of saying that the sale of offsets is not linked to any real change in forest management. Wayburn's group forecasts that the van Eck Forest will achieve more than 500,000 tons of CO2 emission reductions over the coming century. But that figure is based on comparing projected carbon storage at van Eck with the amount of CO2 the land would retain under the most aggressive harvest regime permitted by California's Forest Practice Rules-rules that, admittedly, are tougher than those of many other states. There's no question that van Eck stores far more carbon than the clear-cuts that surround it. But the worst-case scenario is not a fair measure of its value as a carbon sink. It's a paradox: if your habit is to chop down every possible tree, it's easy to show that changing your behavior will increase carbon storage. But because van Eck has been managed to a higher standard for decades, marketing its existing carbon may not be justified.

Still, the architects of the CARB protocol hope to use examples like van Eck to grow a market in forest carbon that's strong enough to combat the pressures pushing development and overharvesting throughout the state and to set an example for the world. To ensure that offset projects provide a permanent increase in carbon uptake, the protocol demands that landowners set up conservation easements that prevent land from being sold for development. In terms of climate mitigation, that policy is essential, but many in the timber industry see it as a nonstarter. Unless the landowner is already as wealthy and conservation-minded as Fred van Eck was, says Bill Stewart, the Berkeley forestry expert, "Why would anyone else want to lock up a stand of timber with a conservation easement? Because the price of carbon right now is about one-eighth the price of redwood lumber."

Wofsy, however, sees hope in the idea of marketing forest carbon. He explains that older, larger timber is ultimately more valuable; the key is to compensate owners for the loss of short-term profits while they wait for their trees to grow. "If we find ways to pay people for allowing carbon to accumulate," he says, "we can have a big effect, for a relatively small sum changing hands. There have been studies both here in the Northeast and in the Amazon that give us hard numbers that show you can log your trees, get a good economic return, and still have them be quite efficient at taking CO2 out of the atmosphere."

Bev Law leans against the broad trunk of an old-growth ponderosa pine, describing a morning when she came out to run physiological tests on the tree and found a bat huddled in the craggy bark at its base, snoozing in the first light of day. Far above our heads a white-headed woodpecker, a bird drawn to old, high-elevation pine forests, hammers away at a neighboring pine.

Law has been around the woods since she was a toddler, long enough to know that the timber industry is a necessary part of the picture. She lives in a wooden house, as do I.

Law groans when she hears foresters talk of harvesting 40-year-old stands in Oregon's Coast Range. "We could be storing much more carbon than we do now," she says. There's no single answer to the problem of forest destruction and overharvesting, but she knows where she'd like to start. "If I had the power to change things," she says, "I would increase the length of forest harvest rotations so that more carbon is stored on the ground for longer periods." That basic step -- waiting a few decades longer before cutting down trees -- makes sense if you look at it from the sky above the forest canopy or through the eyes of the creatures that find shelter beneath it.

For now, the power of the market easily overwhelms that perspective. Countering commerce in lumber with commerce in carbon may be part of the solution, but if so, it will be a winding way through the woods. Still, armed with their high-tech wizardry, Law and her colleagues have opened a new window into the intimate workings of forests. Their findings lay to rest the hoary notion that old-growth forests are worthless in the fight against global warming. On the contrary, they are an essential part of the struggle.

This article was made possible by a generous grant from the Larsen Fund.