Daily Score Blog

As we've written here before, forests have gained a lot of attention in the climate change conversation because of their ability to suck carbon out of the atmosphere. Individuals can buy "reforestation" offsets on the Internet. There's talk of including credits for carbon stored in trees and wood products as part of many proposed cap-and-trade systems. Cities and businesses are even planting trees as part of their efforts to slow climate change.

There's no doubt that forests, and their tremendous ability to store carbon, can play a role in protecting the climate. But we have to be cautious about that role. Forest ecosystems are, by their nature, unpredictable-there's simply no way to know how much carbon a forest will store over the long haul, Worse, climate change itself magnifies those uncertainties. If a warmer climate makes forest fires more frequent - as some people believe is possible - then a lot of "offsets" will simply go up in smoke. Or consider BC's devastating pine beetle infestation - an example of how ecosystem disruption can fell more trees than any chainsaw.

And there's troubling news today that makes us more cautious than ever: A new global study by researchers at the University of Helsinki shows that trees are absorbing less CO2 than predicted, as the world warms and vegetation patterns shift.

I've written about the American political horse race before. We all know what's wrong with it. First, the obvious: It's only January and we're already dead sick of hearing an endless (and fairly mindless) tally of strategic moves, campaign tactics, fundraising, and poll numbers. More importantly and fundamentally damaging though is that horse-race tunnel-vision keeps us from what could be a healthy national conversation about the future of the country and the issues that matter most. And a protracted one at that!

Take climate change, for example. Many of the presidential candidates are talking about it (some of them a lot). But the media are not.

In a recent study, the League of Conservation Voters found that in the more than 120 interviews and debates with the presidential candidates in 2007, the five major political talk show hosts collectively have asked 2,484 questions. In all this time, the words "global warming" or "climate change" have only been mentioned three times and only a handful of climate-related questions have been asked. Twenty-four, to be precise.

When I was a little kid, I remember being stuck in gridlock on I-5. (Seattle had congested freeways even back in the 1970s, shocking as that sounds.) And I remember being perplexed that all the cars would slow down in heavy traffic. Instead of spacing out so far, I wondered, why couldn't they all just maintain 55 miles per hour and drive inches apart. As long as everyone agreed to drive the same speed and not hit the brakes, heavy traffic wouldn't require us to slow down. Right?

My parents didn't get it. Typical parents.

I changed my mind sometime after I got my driver's license. But now it turns out there's evidence that I was right all along. 

Lately it feels like Northwest wilderness protection can't catch a break. Not only has it proved damnably difficult to pass even popular new wilderness designations, but much-loved trails and access roads are getting pummeled by winter storms. Routinely it seems. 

But maybe -- just maybe -- there's a golden opportunity amidst the storm wreckage. Maybe we've been given a cheap and easy way to expand our wilderness areas. After all, a washed-out or heavily-damaged road means more than just frustrated hikers: it also means a lot more wild country.

That's because some of the worst storm-related fury is actually the aftermath. Chronic underfunding, mismanagement, and heightened concern for the environment often makes rebuilding access roads to trails prohibitively expensive or extremely controversial. In fact, Washington is a good example. The mangled Dosewallips and the Stehekin River Roads have probably been the most contentious locations. But also the Cascade, Suiattle, and White Chuck River Roads, plus the Mountain Loop Highway near Barlow Pass. Oh, and the Queets, which has been out of commission for who knows how long. And I hear the the South Shore Quinault is out again. That's just some of the major stuff: it doesn't include the welter of smaller forest roads that provide valuable access to lesser known trails and peaks.

Trailheads are part of a large share of my weekends, so I certainly appreciate the ready access that we Cascadians are blessed with. But I'm conflicted too. Despite Washington's comparative wealth of official wilderness areas -- a greater share of our land than any state other than Alaska and California -- I've long wish we had even more. But too much of our wilderness is barren rock and ice terrain; it's lovely to look at, but it's not habitat-rich like low elevation areas are. And that's where the road-destroying storms may have a silver lining.

Exhibit A is the ever-controversial Dosewallips River Road.