PRESS ROOM
Opinion Piece
I Pledged $1 Million to Plant New Trees. I wish I Could Invest the Money in Saving Old Ones.
June 14, 2023
By Roger Worthington | Published in The New York Times
Mr. Worthington is a plaintiffs’ asbestos lawyer and the owner of Worthy Brewing in Bend, Ore.
Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning.
A few years ago, feeling the need to do my part to slow global warming, I pledged $1 million to plant a million native conifer trees, many of them in areas burned by wildfires in Oregon’s Cascade Mountains, to remove and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Most of that money went to reforestation projects on national forest land carried out by a nonprofit I began. The work was overseen by the U.S. Forest Service.
At the time, my friends in the conservation world warned me against it. The agency manages its lands for multiple uses, including timber harvesting, and has allowed the cutting of carbon-rich, old-growth forests whose destruction contributes to global warming. They also suggested that replanting burn zones was often misguided because in many places, forests historically tend to return on their own.
I asked the Forest Service to guarantee that the saplings planted using my money would not grow up only to be logged later by the timber companies. The agency declined. But overcome, I suppose, by pie-in-the-sky do-gooderism, I pledged the money anyway.
Over the next few years, over 650,000 trees were planted. Today, with a balance of over $250,000 remaining, we’re on track to exceed the target of one million trees.
I should be happy, right? I wish I was. A subsequent event made me reconsider my decision.
Last year the Forest Service went forward with the logging of dozens of mature ponderosa pines along a popular bike trail running past my backyard. The stated reason was to reduce the risk of fire, though ponderosa pines are among the most fire resistant in the forest. When a citizen offered to buy out the big trees from the logging contract, the agency declined, citing the fact that a contract was already in place.
A recent assessment of Oregon’s forest reserves in the journal Frontiers in Forests and Global Change concluded that the “most important action Oregon can take to mitigate climate change” is to preserve existing forests. Because it takes decades for young trees and their surroundings to absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than what’s released, the study said that “planting young trees will not result in much additional” carbon storage within the time left to meet urgent targets to slow global warming.
And with that warming escalating, along with droughts, blast furnace winds, larger wildfires, soil desiccation and wildlife habitat loss, what are the chances that the saplings we helped plant will actually reach the point when they can begin to make a dent in carbon pollution?
When I first made the pledge, many scientists were saying that the next 10 to 30 years was a critical period for action to prevent dangerous overheating of the planet. In March, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that the nations of the world needed to shift immediately from fossil fuels. At the same time, we’re allowing more carbon to escape into the atmosphere from industrial logging (which includes road building, hauling, burning logging debris, soil disruption, spraying and milling).
More than 10 percent of the nation’s carbon emissions are captured each year by its public and private forests. Of those, “many old-growth and mature forests have a combination of higher carbon density and biodiversity that contribute to both carbon storage and climate resilience,” according to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who oversees the Forest Service.
A recent inventory by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management found that more than 32 million acres of old-growth and some 80 million acres of mature forest are on lands managed by the two agencies. Now the question for the Biden administration is, how much of those forests will be preserved?
Forests on federal land are held in trust for the public. We own them. The federal government has a duty to protect these crucial assets. Shouldn’t our elected officials, as prudent trustees, be erring on the side of leaving strategic forest carbon reserves intact for present and future generations?
In Washington and Oregon, where I live, logging in the entirety of those two states between 2003 and 2012 accounted for the destruction of far more tree biomass — a measure of the weight of the trees — than did wildfires and beetle infestations, according to study in the journal Environmental Research Letters. (A total of 53 percent of Oregon’s land, and more than 30 percent of Washington’s, are managed by the federal government.)
The assessment of Oregon’s forest reserves I mentioned earlier tells me that my money would be best invested in safeguarding mature trees and old forests. I would gladly invest that remaining $250,000, and even more, if the Forest Service would allow conservation investors like me to bid in Forest Service timber sales — not to cut down the trees, but to preserve them. But the agency requires buyers to remove the timber on the land; if they fail to do so, they can be held in breach of contract.
Our elected officials can show us that they are serious about doing their part to slow climate change by protecting our beloved shade-giving, carbon-sequestering, wildfire resistant, watershed-stabilizing and wildlife-enhancing mature and older trees.
Time and again, we’ve heard that time is of the essence in slowing climate change by cutting emissions and removing them from the atmosphere. We should continue to plant new trees, of course, targeting fallowed farmlands and urban areas. But for my money, and for the sake of future generations, we need regulatory action from the Biden administration to leave nature’s best carbon absorbers standing tall.
Roger Worthington is a plaintiffs’ asbestos lawyer and the owner of Worthy Brewing in Bend, Ore.
Hopservatory
Oregon Travels: 12 awesome things to do in Bend, from museums to brewery
hopping
The Mercury News | June 5, 2023
Little Did I Know: Northern lights and their deep, dark secret
Central Oregon Daily News | May 7, 2023
Take in the night sky from Worthy Brewing’s Hopservatory in Bend
Oregon Live | March 2, 2023
Worthy Brewing’s Hopservatory affords a glance at galaxies, stars and planets
Bend Bulletin | February 24, 2023
Little Did I Know: Mt. Bachelor didn’t exist last time green comet visited
Central Oregon Daily News | February 3, 2023
What light source could be bright as The Christmas Star?
Central Oregon Daily News | December 23, 2022
‘Once in a lifetime’: Locals peer at Jupiter’s closest approach in 59 years
Central Oregon Daily News | September 26, 2022
A guide to stargazing: Where to find the darkest skies
Washington Post | May 13, 2022
The future of Bend’s light pollution; seeing stars a thing of the past?
Central Oregon Daily News | April 4, 2022
Source Weekly | March 16, 2022
Central Oregon’s Clear Skies Make It an Ideal Place for Stargazing in Winter
Willamette Weekly | November 24, 2021
17 Outstanding Spots for Stargazing in Oregon
Space Tourism Guide | July 5, 2021
The Myth of Mercury in Retrograde
Central Oregon Daily News | June 4, 2021
Drink A Draft And Gaze At The Stars At Worthy Hopservatory In Oregon
Only in your state | November 12, 2020
Blue Moon on Halloween a rarity…or is it?
Central Oregon Daily News | October 30, 2020
PNW in peak viewing range of rare Comet NEOWISE
Central Oregon Daily News | July 17, 2020
The Stars Have Beckoned Us: Part Four Of "Walking The High Desert"
The Source Weekly | June 28, 2020
Sisters Grad Operates Hopservatory
Nugget News | July 30, 2019
The New York Times | May 30, 2019
Oregon Natural Desert Association | March 30, 2019
Destination Oregon: Hopservatory
Central Oregon Daily News | July 20, 2018
Bend's Worthy Garden Club comes up with its own unifying theory: beer and cosmos
KATU | June 27, 2018
Bend's Worthy Brewing is the world's only combination brewery and observatory
Willamette Week | March 4, 2018
Super Blue Blood Moon Swoon
The Source Weekly | January 31, 2018
Things to do in Oregon: Stargazing at the Hopservatory, a brewery observatory
The Mercury News | October 22, 2017
Source on the scene: Solar eclipse viewing at Worthy Brewing
Central Oregon Daily | August 18, 2017
Stargaze at Worthy Brewing's Hopservatory
Travel Oregon | July 19, 2017
The world's first Hopservatory
1859 Oregon's Magazine | May 24, 2017
Worthy's Hopservatory connects beer and space
The Bulletin | May 13, 2017
Ales and astronomy
The Source Weekly | November 2, 2016
Worthy Brewing opens country's first Hopservatory
Beer Advocate | December 2, 2016
Farm & Garden
The Source Weekly | May 19, 2021
Tour shows off High Desert hop farms
The Bulletin | August 27, 2017
It's fresh hop season!
The Bulletin | December 12, 2014
Growing their own
The Bend Buzz Blog | September 6, 2013