PFT President, Laurie Wayburn, recently took to the pages of the New York Times to re-up the remarkable ability of older, more natural forests to sequester extraordinary amounts of carbon, and highlights California’s pioneering efforts to harness the power of its natural and working lands. Text of the letter is reproduced below.

Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

November 24, 2023

To the Editor:

Managing and conserving the world’s forests to restore and maintain their more natural state have the potential to be an extraordinarily powerful climate solution, but it won’t happen without investments comparable to those in the renewable energy and green transportation sectors. World leaders should take a cue from California. This month a committee advising the state on climate policy called for investing $10 billion in restoring, conserving and managing the state’s forests and other natural and working lands. The proposal would achieve up to 400 million tons of carbon reduction in California alone over the next 10 years. While newly planted trees take decades of intensive management to capture significant carbon, standing forests can be managed to sequester vast amounts of carbon in just a few years, bringing us much closer to reaching the Paris Agreement goals by 2030. Investing in our forests and other lands now is the fastest, lowest cost and most effective way to get the planet out of the woods and on our way to a more climate-friendly future.