Forest owners can sell carbon credits for their trees

IRVINE — Justin Maxson admits that the concept he's been explaining to Appalachian landowners is a little difficult to wrap your mind around:

"There's an odorless, colorless gas that is sucked out of the air by your trees, and somebody's going to pay you for that."

The gas is carbon dioxide, or CO2, which contributes to global warming. Industries that produce it, and want to reduce their carbon footprint, are willing to pay when healthy trees do what they do naturally, which is absorb the CO2 and store it.

Because the trees must be in forests that are well-managed, a side benefit is that the region's long-abused forests could finally get some respect. That, in turn, is good news for wildlife and water quality.

No money has changed hands yet, mostly because the program is voluntary and the recession has lowered the amount of money that companies are willing to spend. But legislation is looming that could limit CO2 emissions and push up prices.

Read on
The painting is by Alfred Glendening

Police cadets’ tree-planting project takes root

Bid to offset force’s carbon footprint

GRAMPIAN police cadets have spent their week planting 9,000 trees in an attempt to offset some of the force’s carbon footprint.

The 18 youngsters, aged 16 and 17, have been carrying out the initiative at Loch Muick in Deeside as part of the force’s environmental policy and also to help provide a sustainable habitat for local wildlife.

Grampian Police's environmental working group chairman Alastair Graham said: “The force is committed to reducing emissions, energy consumption and waste and actively looks at ways to minimise the impact of Grampian Police's operations on the environment.

“The tree-planting initiative will use some of the force's energy savings to help further improve the environment and we thought it would be a suitable project for our cadets to undertake.”

Inspector Jacqui Campbell, of the HR training unit, said: “We want to impress the need for environmental awareness on our younger staff.

“This week's project will give our cadets a practical team building experience but, more importantly, it will give them the opportunity to contribute to sustainable environmental developments.”

Read here
The painting is by Byun Shi Ji

The joke that grew into a school forest

MOST Sydney schools have vegetable patches, rainwater tanks or solar panels, but the students of Ascham School are sure they are the only ones with their own eco-forest.

The brainchild of a year 11 student, Sarah Cohn, the forest, hopefully, will eventually be big enough to completely offset the Edgecliff school's carbon use.

It is ambitious and innovative, but it started out as just another paper recycling campaign.

"After I saw the movie An Inconvenient Truth, I started looking at Ascham and how un-environmentally-friendly it was," Sarah says. "As a student, the thing we notice most is how much paper the school uses, so I thought that was going to be one of the main problems."

But closer investigation, and a meeting with the school bursar, Bill Apter, proved otherwise. "Mr Apter showed me a pie chart of where our usage actually was and the two biggest areas were electricity and gas."

To reduce expenditure in these areas, the pair successfully campaigned to have the temperature of the school swimming pool reduced by a few degrees, dramatically reducing gas consumption. It was a good result, but they wanted more.

"I had calculated the school's carbon footprint and I jokingly said that if we turned the whole school into a forest, then we could offset all our carbon emissions," Apter says.

But Sarah took the suggestion seriously. A few weeks later she had another meeting with Apter.

Read on
The painting is by Laura Tasheiko