5/21/2023 0 Comments Bootleg fireNow the company is issued carbon credits as their forests improve. Purchased in 2014, their acreage had been heavily harvested before their ownership. Representative Patti Case of the Green Diamond Resource Company, which runs the carbon project, said it will be weeks after the fire is out before the company can assess the impact on its forests. Under California Cap and Trade, if your company is looking to offset its emissions, you can still buy carbon credits from the Klamath East offsets even though they’re losing trees to wildfires because of how these trees are insured. Credits aren’t like traditional currency once it’s submitted, it is considered “retired” and cannot be used again.Īs of December 20, the Klamath East offset has been issued over 790 thousand credits with 140 thousand of them retired. The company can then hold or trade the credits until they are submitted to the government for compliance purposes. Those credits can be sold to a company looking to compensate for their own emissions, allowing them to claim carbon neutrality. Once approved, they earn a credit for every ton of CO2 their forests absorb. To be considered as this type of offset, the landowner must show that their forest performs above average as a carbon reducer when compared with other forests. That’s around one fifth of Klamath East’s total land, according to a CNN analysis.Ī carbon offset can take many forms, but the large majority in the United States are created under the designation: Improved Forest Management. Since the Bootleg Fire started, it has spread through nearly 90,000 acres of trees set aside to offset carbon emissions on behalf of businesses and individuals. Some of that land is private, including the carbon offset known as Klamath East owned and operated by the Green Diamond Resource Company, a forest products company. A mountainous and forested region, Klamath county sits just north of the Oregon and California border and is home to US National Forest land. Now the fire is generating its own weather with only 32% of the fire contained. What started as a lightning strike on July 6, the Bootleg Fire has now grown to roughly twice the size of New York City with 2,250 personnel fighting these blazes spanning over 40 miles east to west. As persistent drought and wildfire conditions threaten carbon offsets, the question is whether these offsets matter at all if their stored carbon goes up in smoke in a warming climate. The trees in these forests were meant to survive one hundred years. At the time of this report, the flames spread through one fifth of forests set aside for carbon offsets in the immediate area. Oregon’s largest wildfire so far this season, the Bootleg Fire, has burned nearly 400,000 acres spreading approximately four square miles a day across the southern parts of the state.
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