The Paper Industry and Global Warming
by Adam T. Williams

According to EPA figures, there is more carbon in the atmosphere now than at anytime in the last 160,000 years. The two human activities that are believed to affect the global carbon cycle the most are the burning of fossil fuels (the major source of CO2) and the destruction of forest ecosystems (the planet's major carbon sinks).

The World Bank reports that global consumption of wood products was about 3.4 billion cubic meters at the beginning of this decade. By the year 2000, that figure will reach 4.2 billion cubic meters.

The pulp and paper industry anticipates that the global demand for wood fiber will double every 39 years, keeping pace with population growth. Global paper consumption is expected to grow by 50 percent by 2040.

Recycling will not save forests. The World Watch Institute has noted that, even though 37 percent of waste paper was recycled in 1991, "recycling has yet to dent the world's appetite for virgin-fiber pulp."

In 1991, the world consumed about 255,674,000 tons of paper. The US accounted for 85,252,000 tons - 674 pounds for every man, woman and child. Today it is estimated that US paper users consume about one billion trees per year in the form of paper - despite recycling programs and paper from non-wood sources. Total US paper consumption increases by about 14 million tons annually.

Disposable paper commodities - facial tissue, napkins, paper towels and toilet paper - are either incinerated (which releases more CO2 into the air) or buried in landfills (where they release methane gas).

Paper is the dominant material in solid waste. According to Maureen Smith, author of The US Paper Industry and Sustainable Production, methane from the world's landfills may account for anywhere from 3 to 19 percent of global methane releases, with the US accounting for 39 percent of the total. While methane is less prevalent in the atmosphere than CO2 it is a much stronger greenhouse gas.

US pulpmills consume 12,430 square miles of forests each year. An estimated 1.2 million acres of forest are clearcut annually to feed 140 chip mills in the southeastern US.

An estimated 120 billion tons of carbon were released into the atmosphere between 1850 and 1990 as a result of deforestation. Forest loss from 1980 through 1990 alone released 1.6 billion tons.

The US pulp and paper industry is the third largest energy consumer after the chemical and primary metals industries. During 1994, the paper industry consumed 2,700 trillion BTUs - 3.1 percent of all US energy consumption.

If the US pulp and paper industry continues business as usual, it will emit more than 1.2 billion metric tons of CO2 over the next five years. This means that over the next half-decade, the US paper industry will generate the same amount of carbon as one-sixth of the total annual global carbon emissions generated by all human activities combined.

The timber and paper industries argue that cutting forests and planting new trees is the key to creating larger carbon sinks to curb global warming since younger, fast-growing trees absorb more carbon than older, mature trees.

But many studies have shown that old growth forests absorb more carbon than new-growth. A 1995 World Resources Institute/EPA study found that plantations and tree farms in tropical forests can store, at best, only one- fourth as much carbon as natural forests. Industrial tree-planting doesn't prevent global warming. In fact, it may help speed up the process.

Excerpted from a longer article in The Northern Forest Forum [PO Box 6, Lancaster, NH 03584. $15 for six issues].