Western North America: Carbon Capture Climate Initiative

Seven western states and four Canadian provinces have joined forces
in a plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions. An entire new source of
long-term revenue is available to British Columbia’s government,
which will enable protection of massive tracks of old growth forests
and fresh water supplies. Under the Western Climate Initiative,
Arizona, California, Oregon, Montana, New Mexico, Utah, Washington,
B.C., Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec have agreed to cut the region’s
carbon emissions by 15 per cent below 2005 levels by 2020.

The backbone of their plan is a cap-and-trade system. A similar approach
was used in the early 1990s to combat acid rain around the Great
Lakes caused by the pollution from coal-burning power plants. The
cap-and-trade will require utilities and other companies to meet
tough emission standards. Businesses that cannot cut their emissions
because of costs or technical hurdles will be allowed to buy emission
credits from companies that have spent the money to lower their
emissions or are reducing greenhouse gases in other ways. Most large
industrial polluters, automakers and coal-based utilities are
scrambling to find companies to sell them offset
credits. Mark Harmon of Oregon State University and other scientists
have found that Pacific Northwest old growth forests capture and store
vast amounts of carbon dioxide. Conversion of those forests to young,
fast-growing forests did not decrease atmospheric carbon. In fact, it
took those low-elevation second-growth forests at least 200 years to
accumulate the carbon dioxide storage capacity of existing old-growth
forests. Preserving those forests would  thus qualify for emission credits.

In other words, B.C.’s standing old
growth forests are valuable not just as milled saw-timber or pulp. The
province’s old growth is a gold mine for burgeoning worldwide offset
markets, as well as its bountiful medicines and other valuable
non-timber forest products. http://DrReese.com
http://www.timescolonist.com/Business/carbon+credit+value+growth+forests/1205431/story.html