Purpose
- Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
- Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
- Explores and develops market-based solutions.
Summary
Putting a price on forest carbon through taxes, carbon border adjustments and other mechanisms are market-based solutions to internalize the externalized damages associated with industrial logging activities. CSE will work to implement forest carbon pricing by (1) publicizing and disseminating our peer reviewed paper and model legislation for a forest carbon tax and reward program; (2) researching and advocating for CBAMs both in the US and internationally that include a price on forest carbon; (3) building strategic alliances with wood alternative industry leaders to help combat logging subsidies and timber industry disinformation; (4) mobilizing members of the Forest Carbon Coalition, and (5) holding public agencies accountable for quantifying and reducing GHG emissions and associated social costs from the logging sector.
Description
December 2024 Update:
The Forest Carbon Coalition is about to launch its Keep It In The Forest Campaign as a way to amplify all the work we’ve been doing over the past few years documenting the adverse climate impacts of industrial logging activities and garner support for market based mechanisms including forest carbon tax and reward, no net loss, and subsidy reform to keep carbon in the forest as an essential climate strategy. We will be publishing a series of 12 opinion pieces from leading forest protection advocates over the next three months to help grease the wheels.
In June, CSE published the first honest accounting of GHG emissions from industrial logging in California and have received good media coverage on that. See this link here for one story from Anewscafe: https://anewscafe.com/2024/09/23/redding/new-study-suggests-california-should-start-counting-timber-industrys-greenhouse-gas-emissions/.
Others from Politico and Huffington Post are in the works.
Despite the challenging circumstances nationally, we have had a major political breakthrough in Washington State on the forest issue. Thanks in part to CSE’s initiatives on both fossil fuel risk bonds and forest protection with the King County Council, the Council’s former chair Dave Upthegrove decided to run for Commissioner of Public Lands. After a nail biter of a campaign, we are pleased to report that Dave has won and will be a champion for protection of carbon rich forests and rational accounting of logging’s GHG emissions, including the social costs that are being passed on to us all. This was an unexpected, but welcome outcome from our forest work.
Lastly, a quick update on border carbon adjustment work we are initiating this year. We are in the midst of quantifying the specific carbon intensities of conventional wood products from the studies the Walker Foundation has helped fund and are now reaching out to international wood alternatives industries (i.e. bamboo, carbon negative concrete, wind and solar) to ensure that any US legislation or EU directives on BCAs accurately reflect the carbon footprint of logging so as to help level the playing field on trade.
Another interesting development is the potential for working with the Trump Administration on tariffs. The overlap between BCAs and tariffs (i.e. BCAs can be used as a legitimate form of tariff that can incentivize less carbon intensive production) is receiving attention among climate policy folks, and we hope to be part of that conversation soon.
Purpose
Climate change has been referred to as the most spectacular market failure ever. The market’s failure to incorporate the costs of climate change into prices of wood and paper products supports a tremendous level of over-production, over-consumption, and wasteful uses of these commodities. Putting a price on high-emissions logging operations is a critical market-based solution for internalizing the catastrophic costs associated with climate change and rebalancing markets to support efficient use of energy resources, forestlands, and wood products. With respect to forestlands, CSE has pioneered the development of several market-based policy interventions that decision makers can use to help expedite the transformation of industrial forest practices to climate smart alternatives. These include forest carbon tax and reward, subsidy reform, cap and invest, no net loss and climate resiliency plans for large owners.
Scope
We are working at the federal level by participating in new regulatory processes initiated by the Biden-Harris Administration via Executive Order 14008, Executive Order 14072, and the new US pledge to end deforestation and forest degradation by 2030. The Forest Carbon Coalition serves as our primary partner within these processes. We are also working at the state level in parallel executive-order processes, primarily in the states of Maine, North Carolina, Washington and Oregon. In each of these processes, CSE is advocating for forest carbon pricing as a means for achieving key forest-climate goals.
Amount Approved
$50,000.00
on 5/15/2024
