It is difficult to understand how allowing clear cutting can
positively influence the carbon content of the atmosphere. While
industry may wish to identify a positive contribution over a
century time period experience and common sense says that
projections over 100 years are never accurate.
What is clear is that the short term effects of harvesting timber
add carbon to the atmosphere and clear cutting adds more carbon.
Time horizon's in the business world are for good reason
notoriously short-sighted. There is no reason to suddenly adopt a
century perspective. If within the next hundred we have not
completely changed the carbon budgets in a revolutionary fashion we
will have certainly suffered a revolution in the ecosystem and
eliminated the habitat of a large number of plants and animals.
The thrust of this proposal is to promote short-term timber
harvests increasing the atmospheric carbon load while securing some
unknown benefits in a long-term uncertain future. Clearly a bad
bargain.
Please remove this provision and rethink the entire protocol.
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