Snowy egret perched on a Colorado blue spruce above Hallam Lake. Photo courtesy Peter Feinzig
When I think about forests and their role in our climate, there are two sayings I find myself repeating. The first is that we need to be able to “chew gum and walk at the same time,” and the second is, “if it were easy, everyone would be doing it.”
Regarding the chewing-gum saying, we need to tackle the climate crisis without compromising other environmental values. This challenge relates directly to the Planetary Boundaries framework established in 2009 by 29 scientists convened at the Stockholm Resilience Centre. The framework outlines “nine processes that regulate the stability and resilience of the Earth system.” Each process has an identified boundary, which, if crossed, “increases the risk of generating large-scale abrupt or irreversible environmental changes.” In 2023, scientists reconvened to assess each boundary, and they determined that we had transgressed six of the nine, one of which is climate change.
We must address climate change while tackling the other five planetary boundaries we’ve transgressed, which include species protection, pollution (including disruptions of natural cycles and human synthesized chemicals), freshwater protection, and habitat protection. Additionally, we have a moral obligation to rectify the historical injustices in how our society has been powered. The fossil fuel industry has been particularly unjust, with the poorest in our society bearing the brunt of the impacts from the extraction, transportation, refinement, and combustion of fossil fuels. The transition to renewable energy offers an opportunity to correct many of these historical and ongoing injustices. In sum, we need to do multiple things at once—find ways to solve climate change while addressing other environmental concerns and creating a more equitable society.
Then we have the second saying: “if it were easy, everyone would be doing it.” While we have the necessary technology, addressing climate change is not easy. If it were, we would have done it already. We need to dramatically change how our society is powered, fed, and moved. Changing any one of these things would be a daunting task, changing all three of them is Herculean. The good news is that while we still have a long way to go, we are making progress. Since 2010, as a result of investments in research, development, and manufacturing capacity, the cost of building utility-scale solar has decreased by a staggering 76 percent.1 According to the International Energy Agency, this makes solar “the cheapest electricity in history.” In 2024, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s forecast, 96 percent of planned electricity-generating capacity additions in the U.S. will be renewable energy. Deforestation and land use for agriculture have been steadily declining. All of this good news has made some of the most catastrophic climate change scenarios very unlikely. Unfortunately, we’ve also moved slowly enough that some of the best-case scenarios are now very unlikely too. The reality is thatwe need more of everything—more clean energy, more low carbon agriculture, and more preserved ecosystems.
Whatever the future holds, forests will continue to play a pivotal role in the carbon cycle and our climate future. While we can’t plant our way out of the climate crisis, when it comes to carbon and forests, there are some simple guidelines that can aid our decision-making:
- Protect intact forests: Nature builds forests better than humans can, and it takes time for forests to sequester carbon. Forests that naturally established and have existed for decades or centuries harbor more biodiversity and sequester more carbon than those planted by humans. Our first priority is to halt deforestation.
- It’s not all about carbon: Forests are remarkable ecosystems that harbor vast amounts of biodiversity and make human life viable in many parts of the world. While climate mitigation is critical, we must value forests for more than their carbon.
- Trees aren’t a silver bullet for climate change: Increasing carbon storage in forests and other ecosystems will be part of the solution to climate change. However, this process is often slow, uncertain, and not always durable. Our primary focus must be on reducing carbon emissions. Reforestation and forest preservation should not be used to justify emissions that are rapid, certain, and difficult to reverse.
- Nature does it better: For hundreds of millions of years, trees have been regrowing in disturbed areas, and they’re very good at it. Whenever possible, we should allow nature to regenerate on its own. This isn’t always feasible, but when it is, we should embrace it.
