Conventional thinking says that wood products, such as lumber and furniture, play a monumental role in fueling or slowing climate change. New research throws cold water on that theory. Recent research shows that wood offsets only one percent of annual global carbon emissions by securing carbon in wood forms.
The most recent analysis factored in 180 countries. Researchers discovered that global wood products offset far less carbon dioxide (Co2) than originally anticipated at only approximately 330 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2015, a year that wasn’t considered a statistical aberration. Wood sequestration is a being touted as the ideal tool for forestalling the effects of climate change, but recent research calls that belief into question.
Governments and NGOs are pooling many resources into wood product carbon sequestration whereas the research says their resources would be more wisely spent elsewhere. Wood product carbon sequestration is slated to rise by more than 100 million tons over the next decade. That increase is somewhat variable to account for ambiguity with future economic growth and each country’s commitment to obviating the negative effects of climate change. Contrary to popular thinking, much more climate change prevention could be accomplished by forcing reform in a select few countries that are heavily reliant on the timber industry.
Countries from around the world have been spurred on to account for their wood sequestration by the Paris Agreement, a climate change bill that boasts 195 signatories. The current research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison factors in the two most salient factors in terms of nailing down projections on wood sequestration – population growth and economic growth. One without the other isn’t necessarily problematic, in other words. More people in certain countries won’t skyrocket the need for lumber, and far fewer people in rich countries could significantly impact the projections upwards. The research takes an all-things-being-equal approach.
The research showed that wood products in the United States reduced emissions by a negligible amount in 2015, and that number is not anticipated to grow markedly between 2019 and 2065 on a proportional annual basis. Still, the current UN rules governing lumber cultivation and wood sequestration are problematic since the UN only counts wood products (paper, lumber, etc.) from timber harvests cultivated domestically. The UN’s mode of calculation underappreciates products made from imported timber or internationally shipped timber. Updates to climate models are expected shortly to account for this new research.
