Did they have Hamburger Pattie for breakfast?
metalman.

"the move to a carbon neutral world is good news for the forest industry"

Sorry, not. The forest needs C02 to grow, higher C02 equals a better growth rate as in the past. The human contribution to atmospheric C02 is at best 1% so we, humans, have hardly added to C02 rise which is overall beeficial. So Pat wants the forest to grow but take away its food.

I smell a scam to raise taxes,"the ability of the governments to raise taxes with some sort of feel good factor, (saving the planet)".

How did those forests ever manage to thrive for thousands of millennia before mankind arrived on the scene and now threatens to take away their *food*?

If one takes away the 1% that mankind has added (as some claim) wouldn't it make almost no difference and things would simply return to normal again?

How would the forests end up being harmed?

Puzzled.

Just trying to show C02 is a good thing and more the better.

Yes.

However, the oceans will absorb quite a bit of the increased concentration of CO2 in the air and this has already led to an increase of the acidity of the oceans and this is killing the coral reefs all over the place.

It affects plankton and krill, which are the basic foundation of the food chain.

Life in the sea is sensitive to upsets in ph levels and temperature.

Is that a good thing?

And the world continues to turn and repeat itself.

Go back around 15 years or so and Plateau was buying logs by the acre. It worked fairly well. The cut blocks were very clean and the stumps very low.

Then the seller (Ministry of Forests) thought they were not getting thier share and weight and volume methods would net more revenue for government. Back they came.

Turn, Turn, Turn!

Frank

What forestry?

Well..we do everything else the US coalition against Canadian lumber imports wants, then why not this too?

There could be good things, but there could also be bad things in this shift towards duplicating the US systems. The good thing is that if changed it will expose the ridiculous system we have had for so long. The bad thing is that US system won't work in Canada because our timber(lands) ownership is entirely different than the US.
With very few exceptions, the province's own and control about 95% of all the timber in Canada and every forest company depends upon this one natural resource provider. They depend and live or die by the pricing structures of what these natural resources cost. Wide open competition works in the US because no such single source limitation exists.

BC government timber pricing, including all other government costs associated with providing timber to manufacturing facilities has been a very big problem, especially in BC. This problem is what has lead to the war with the US concerning softwood, the state of our industry and the state of our forest managment, not to mention our overall economy.

If you step back from what occurrs in Canada and look at it for what it is, you will realise that we have government administered agendas which counter act each other. First is that the provinces wish to extract maximum revenues from stumpage (which is an input tax to industry)and feed this tax revenue into what makes our public programs function. That makes sense by itself.
Secondly the governments need to have a flourishing forest industry to consume timber, pay stumpage and provide the OUTPUTS such as employment that make the economy go round. So which one of these are more important? the input tax or the output benefits of manufacturing this natural resource?
Will a starving cow produce very much milk?
If you kill it by starving it, you won't have any milk.
I hate to break this to you Mr Bell but you have a bunch of cement heads at the revenue department that have been largely responsible for forcing the industry to be what it is...and in case you don't know this..we have a largely non diversified industry,with a homogenous business model of selling dimension lumber to one market..a model which requires the fewest possible employees. That's what is bragged about as our key "efficency" in this province.

Apparently you Mr Bell, and all previous forest ministers and the revenue heads have followed in lockstep with the agendas of these few corporations. This is what has and still is the effective starving out from competition,starving out anyone but the largest and thereby starving us the people, the workers, the owners of the resources,from diversity and stability of the output benefits which we should have.

This new bio energy initiative is nothing but lipservice as this too will be done in lockstep with and for the sole benefits to flow to the few select corporations, if and when they determine they are lucrative enough. Just wait to see your new green power bills that keep these corporate friends happy.