Ottawa’s fixation with trees and climate: what exactly are we planting?

Governments around the world, Canada’s included, tend to focus narrowly on the carbon benefits associated with tree-planting while largely, or completely, ignoring the debit side of the ledger.

The considerable carbon debits associated with wildfires, logging, and wood pellet burning are left largely unaddressed by Ottawa, casting serious doubts on claims that planting two billion trees will lower Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions, writes Ben Parfitt. The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade

Opinion

BY BEN PARFITT

June 16, 2021

By two significant measures, last year’s effort to plant 300 million tree seedlings in Canada’s most forest-rich province was a remarkable achievement. Not only was it a record for a single year in British Columbia, but it was achieved in the early throes of the first lockdown associated with t...

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