American Forests Interview

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We have invited a guest who comes from American Forest. He’s the president of the organization. And so naturally, we are going to talk about trees, climate change. And for you who have not heard about the organization. It’s our big organization in America. They’ve been in existence for over 100 years, over a hundred forty years, planted millions of trees already and doing a lot of other work. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today so that you can really understand what is why is that work important that the American Forest are doing for the collective of all of us? So I to say, well, carbon. Chad, to this. And to you. How are you today?

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I’m doing great, Spirit. Thank you so much for the chance to join you today.

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Right. Give us a quick another quick. Give us an overview, understanding about the American forest. What is it that you do and why the important things?

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Yeah. Well, as you shared, we’re an organization that’s almost one hundred and fifty years old. We were founded in eighteen seventy five as the first forests conservation organization in America. And we were founded at a time that America’s forests were really in disrepair. We didn’t have a system of governance for how to take care of our forests. It’s kind of everyone just did whatever they wanted and needed out there in the woods and it looked like it. Our forests were in really ragged shape. And so our organization was founded by concerned citizens who felt that we needed to do a better job of taking care of our forests here in the United States. Everything from putting in place a system of governance and laws that could regulate how we interact with our forests, but also mobilizing citizens and companies and organizations of all types to be part of the work of taking care of our forests. And and from the very beginning, we’ve been about the intersection of science and forestry and policy as a way to drive forward the kinds of actions and solutions that are that are needed in our forests and things like creating the United States Forest Service in 1985 and creating our hundred and ninety three million acres of national forests here in the United States. Those are big foundational changes that we drove forward as an organization in recognition that we needed to be really thoughtful and systematic in the way that we we take care of our forests.

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And so today we are centered on the the challenge and opportunity of forests and climate change. Forests offer immense potential to slow climate change. But at the same time, forests are incredibly vulnerable to climate change. And so we like to think of forests as the swing vote essentially on climate change. And in order to get it right for our forests and climate change, we have to fall back on our own, our historic skills. We need to understand the scientific questions. We need to link that to the forestry that we’re doing out there in the field. And then we need policymakers to take those ideas and to integrate them into how we govern and and care for our forests in this country. And most importantly, we need to do all of that in a way that brings everybody along where we want to act as a servant leader for the forest community, bringing together experts from all those fields and every type of public and private organization, every individual in this country to come together in doing that work that’s necessary to deliver our forests as a climate change solution.

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Ok, I want to summarize a little bit of what I heard or take with me there, too. For the listeners to see if we can break this down, could you basically say if you going back to history, you said one hundred fifty years ago you were the first one to start to kind of put in some kind of. I almost saw an image of the wild, wild West here. There were no rules. People were just doing. And then you guys came along and Perlmutter and you had some kind of regulations cut up, matched the reality back in those days.

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Yeah, that that’s a great description. We we just didn’t have the kinds of forced practices, laws, for example. So, you know, best management practices that we think of today here in the United States and around the world. You know, we now have certain standards that forestry follows and that are are put forth by governments. And, you know, back then we had very loose guidance and regulations on how the practice of forestry was done. And just the role of government more broadly in terms of owning large areas of public land and how those public lands were managed. We didn’t have at that time the same type its scientific understanding of our forest. But then also we hadn’t really translate that into an approach that would make sure that forests would be healthy and resilient and and thrive into the future. And it’s been an ongoing challenge. I mean, just for example, the way that we manage our national forests here in the United States gets one hundred and ninety three million acres of our forests here in the United States are owned by the federal government and managed on behalf of of all of our citizens. And even today, we’re still constantly updating how that management of those lands should be done so that they can do things like solve climate change. They can do things like sustain clean water into the future. And that works complicated. And it and it’s sort of always changing through time. And so it’s that partnership between governments and organizations like ours that they keep kind of recalibrating how we take care of our forests to get it right into the future.

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So the sheriff of the forest stepping in for a while was creating some kind of regulations. And you also kind of, of course, you’re planting trees and restoring the forest. And then you’re talking also about the technology connected to the forest. Could you help us understand technologies part with the forest there? The thing important to me.

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Yeah. Well, you really just actually named two critically important issues that are central to the work of American forests. So we are an organization that, as I’ve mentioned in a few different ways, has always viewed public policy as one of the critical ways to take care of our forests.

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But we’ve also always led by example and been out there on the ground involved in planting millions and millions of trees and act and actively involving our organization directly on the ground in planting for us and and taking care of them as well. And we think that’s critical both to actually deliver those results on the ground, restoring millions of acres of land through, you know, directly our own efforts and in partnership with others.

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But we also think it makes us more informed when we do engage with public policymakers because we know from direct experience what’s actually happening out there in our forests, how urban forestry is actually playing out in our cities. And so we’re not speaking from an ivory tower about forest. We’re speaking from direct experience that we’ve had doing extensive forestry work out there on the ground. And technology is another piece of the puzzle that’s really important to us. Our organization, for example, back in the 1990s led the first ever computer mapping of the tree canopy in our cities. And we found was that we were losing tree canopy in our cities much more quickly than mayors and other government officials realized. And then the public realized. And that, furthermore, the tree canopy mapping that we did at that time showed that not only we were losing our trees more quickly in cities, but that they’re very inequitably distributed, that a map of tree cover in most American cities is also like a map of income and race. And so we’ve managed to put lots of trees in wealthy parts of our cities, but in some cases, the people who most need those health and wealth benefits of trees. And now the benefits of trees and protecting us from climate change are the ones that are getting them the least. And so technology to this day remains the key. Just as a for example, in how we’re helping to deliver tree equity in cities across America by using that computer technology to see where do we need trees most? How do we prioritize the tree planting a tree care that we’re doing to create Trek City across across our cities? And we’re using the same kind of technology to prioritize and design the tree planting and other forest restoration that we’re doing out of large landscapes as well, places like the Sierra Nevada of California, where there are similar kind of strategic questions and scientific questions that you need to answer in in order to invest your your resources the right way in how we plant and restore forests.

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There’s multiple ways I want to go here with this and to ask you a question about them. So let me ask you this. Climate change is coming to against all of us. So we we all have to work together in that America. First, of course, is one of the headliners. Maybe you could say in that fight. Now there’s multiple ways to dealing with climate change. How important is the forest that we’re focusing on forest? And the issue of climate change is not a good question, too, to elaborate on.

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Absolutely. And thank you for asking that question, because sometimes we feel like forests are treated as a luxury item in the climate change solution.

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It’s or like the icing on the cake. Actually, forests are a big part of the cake when it comes to solving climate change. And here in the United States, just as a for example, our forests and our forest products together capture and store about 15 percent of our carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels every year. Fifteen percent of our

carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels store captured and stored in our forests and our forest products here in the United States. We have a lot we are currently delivering a large nets sink for for greenhouse gases in our in our forests sector here in the United States. And, you know, even more exciting is that there is really strong science now from a couple of different directions from both government and the private sector, suggesting that we could nearly double that so that our forests would be doing close to 30 percent, capturing close to 30 percent of our green house gases here in the unites or of our carbon dioxide emissions studio here in the US every single year.

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And so it’s a huge opportunity. And the way we’re going to get that increase is with actions like planting millions and millions, actually billions and billions more trees here in the United States so that we have more forests keeping the forests we have by slowing the loss of forest to development.

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But it’s also about forest management and restoration, both managing forests in some places that they grow more vigorously. And in other parts of America, our biggest challenge is just keeping our forests alive with greater wildfires and forests just being killed by things like drought and pass that are more prevalent in the face of climate change. And so from all these different directions, we have opportunities to have more forest and healthier forests that are capturing, storing more carbon if we if we make the right moves. But the flip side of that is that because climate change is having such an intense impact on forests right now, we have some states in the western United States that have actually already become a nice source of carbon from their forest that is there emitting more carbon. They’re absorbing because of trees dying and forests dying in India. As a result of climate change and therefore emitting carbon from dying trees and burning forests. And so that’s that’s why we talk about forests as the swing vote on climate change. They could. They’re already helping us dramatically. They could do much, much more. But if we don’t pay attention to our forests, they could actually reverse. And we could start losing this power that work with that we’re getting today from our forests. That’s a slow climate change. So we we view this as an absolutely essential investment. If we’re if we’re serious about solving climate change or forest, have the swing vote, we have to make this this investment in what we call carbon offense and carbon defense to capture that opportunity.

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Something catch my interest. When you say swing votes and imagine if someone listening doesn’t really understand politics that well, and that’s a difficult term to understand.

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Could you clarify the swing? What kind of metaphoric or even more?

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Yeah, absolutely. What what I mean by swing vote is that because our forests have the capacity to either help us dramatically and maybe make the difference in being able to solve climate change, but actually could could if we completely ignore them, start to almost become part of the problem. If we allow them to die and burn at more rapid rates and start to emit more carbon. It it really means that they’re not just another piece of the puzzle. That’s nice to have. They. There’s such a gap between what they could do for us if we get it right versus the degree to which they could start to drag us down if we get it wrong that we feel like they kind of hold the key. You think about them as the the linchpin or the key keystone to being able to solve climate change.

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Ok, so planting more trees and creating more forest is really helping, but neglecting forests so that more forest die is really going to get everything much worse. So it’s not just for the solution getting better, it’s only also to make sure we don’t end up in a worse situation. So that’s what you’re saying?

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Yeah, that’s exactly right. And that’s why we are using a metaphor that makes a lot of sense here in the United States. If you think about it like a sports game and we talk about carbon offense and carbon defense and our forests and carbon offense are are those places we have a chance to get ahead through through forests by things like planting a lot more forests and and capturing a lot more carbon dioxide in our forests because we have more trees, for example, carbon defenses we talk about it is just keeping the forest, keeping the carbon that’s there in our forests and protecting that carbon that’s already stored. And so in many places, particularly in the West, where forests are under such stress from things like drought and wildfire, we don’t necessarily need them to capture all that much more carbon. We just need to kind of keep them healthy and keep that carbon that stored. They’re better protected.

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That’s also shift the focus that it’s more important to preserve them than to make them capture more emissions. I’ve not heard that before. If that’s what you said.

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Yeah, well, most important, I think it’s a combination of the two. We what we find is that there’s tremendous. And one of the reasons why I’m lingering on this point is that there’s tremendous excitement and there should be

around things like planting a trillion trees, American forces, as part of one team to work the new trillion tree platform that was announced in Davos. And we are both part of the international movement to scale tree planting to the greatest degree possible to slow climate change and leading the efforts, particularly here in the United States. We call it reforest the rainforest. America is the goal that we’ve set here to plant billions and billions of trees across this country as part of the trillion tree movement. And let me be clear, that is the single biggest way that we can increase forest contribution to solving climate change. More planting more trees equals more carbon capture in our forests. And the scientific research here in the United States suggests that our forests here could increase their carbon capture by more than 40 percent if we are able to plant dramatically more trees across the landscape. But the part that just hasn’t gotten as much attention because it’s more complicated for people is that idea of protecting the carbon that’s already there in our forest and not taking that for granted and seeing things like preventing wildfire as part of this KAB climate action equation, that if we can actually reduce the loss of carbon from our forests, reduce emissions from wildfire, for example.

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Well, that’s actually very important also because we want to trap more carbon, but we want to keep it there. And so the actions that we take, in some cases, thinning our forests and so that they’re less prone to fire. That’s not something that people would necessarily think of as part of how we’re going to slow climate change. But it actually is that if we find our forests and they’re less likely to burn and lose a lot of carbon in the future, that that little bit of subtraction now to prevent a lot of loss later is actually also part of the equation, right alongside planting trees. And so that’s why our organization is working on both ends of that spectrum, planting a lot of trees. But then also taking those actions like thinning our forests that are most dramatically exposed to the threat of a wildfire.

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Yeah.

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If people then if people really care about the environment, feeling, I want to do something. What would you recommend a normal person to do? Is there anything you.

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People can do that you think would really matter at this stage.

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Yeah. One of the things that we love about reforestation, about planting trees, is that it has a role for everyone.

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It’s an all hands on deck climate change solution. And the great news, this is something people can do in their own backyards. They can plant trees literally on their own properties, on churches and schools and other kinds of civic institutions can plant trees on their own property to be part of this solution.

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Every single time we plant a tree, that’s one step forward on climate change and everyone can participate beyond that type of direct action, there ways that people can volunteer with organizations in their communities that are doing lots of tree planting projects all the time and often looking for more hands to make light work.

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Joining an organization like American Forest is another way that people can help support this work the way that we structure our tree planting projects.

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One dollar plants, one tree. So supporting our organization. You can think about it. Every dollar that that folks provides an organization like ours. Know one dollar plants, plants, one tree. And and so that is a very tangible way in which people can get directly involved as well. And not just individuals. You know, we have over two hundred and fifty fifty different corporate partners who are helping us do this work. Companies like IKEA and Bank of America and Eddie Bauer and many others, Microsoft that are partnering with us to plant trees and both providing volunteers to do that work, as well as providing financial support for things like purchasing tree seedlings. And so, you know, folks who are thinking about this from the perspective of how corporations can get involved, there are tremendous opportunities for for for partnership there. And then lastly, there are many opportunities as well just for people to find their voice for forests. So whether it’s engaging in social media and just helping to re circulate content that talks about for us as a solution to climate change. And every time we raise awareness about the role of forests and climates and solving climate change, that plays a critical role, as well as empowering organizations like American forests and encouraging government agencies forward in this in this work and for for folks here in the United States. There are all sorts of opportunities to engage in the political process right now in the United States Congress. For example, we have major legislation proposed that American force has helped to inform that would plant billions of trees across America. One piece of legislation, in particular the Climate Stewardship Act that we helped to to create that would plant 16 billion trees across the United States by 2050. So the political discussion right now about really big moves on forests and climate change, particularly through planting trees. And I think

government officials that are really want to know what the public thinks about ideas like that and as a huge opportunity for folks to find their voice in the political process as well, and to speak up for forests as a climate change solution.

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Then I’m going to summarize what you just said, you you talked about you can plant the tree yourself. You can join an organization kind of like American force and American forces. Almost like an umbrella.

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Guess that you’ve been existing so long as your tentacles are already quite big. You could donate one dollar per tree. So almost if you and I, Jad, if we make a competition or a challenge for ourselves, I’m third. I’m turning 31 this year. So if I donate my age, that would be to 31 trees does. Right. That’s a beautiful birthday gift to ask for. And you would donate something similar, right? 30.

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30 something has that there are less than that. But I’ll match you, I’ll put it that way. I’ll keep it a secret, but I will match your number.

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Perfect. You could donate and it would not cost you more than one donor. If you go from American Forest and then you said raise the awareness on social media. Also important. And then the last thing you said, could you just summarize to clarify? I want.

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Yeah. Just you know, we were talking just now about the role that individuals can play. But just the critical role that institutions can play as well, particularly corporations, have been such leaders in the work of planting trees for climate change. And so I think there’s a continued huge opportunities for other corporations to join this effort globally to help us plant a trillion trees here in the United States, to help us plant billions of trees to reforest America. So we’re as I said, we have over 250 corporate partners right now and always excited to to find other corporations that want to provide volunteers and financial resources to help make this happen. So role for individuals, role for corporations. And of course, we’ve talked a lot about today of a really important role for government to help lead this work forward and put public resources and to match these kinds of private sector resources so we can we can we can get all the way there on forest for climate.

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Ok, we’re gonna start to end this into you. I would like to hear. I have a specific question soon. But before that, just give us some kind of background. When did you start to engage in this? And why do you think?

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Why did you start to go into the environment as a as a sector?

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So I’ve actually worked my my whole career in the environment when I was a college student. I had always been interested in the environment and when I went to college, I didn’t realize it would be an option to work on protecting the environment for my career and was just really fortunate to take some some wonderful classes when I was in college that helped me realize the opportunities to to make my life’s work, to. To work on on conserving the environment. And I’ve worked on forests from the very beginning, for real, my age, a few decades now and then and been passionate about that in my whole career in forest conservation, has done working coalitions.

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I’ve been the leader and director of of many different coalitions prior to coming to American forests. And in fact, I brought with me to the Leadership of American Forests Coalition that I co-founded eleven years ago, called the Forest Climate Working Group. And the Forest kind of Working Group is the only coalition here in the United States across the whole four sector private landowners and forest products companies, government agencies, conservation organizations, academics, carbon investors, all working together more than 51 different more than 50 different organizations working together to identify what actions we need to take to make us forest the climate change solution and then to tell public officials and others what we need to do and rally the nation forward.

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And so that, you know, that the birth of this co of this coalition about eleven years ago was was for me when my my interest and passion in forests fully scaled into applying that to the climate change challenge. And really for that that eleven years ever since had been, you know, wholly centered my career on on that particular issue of forests and climate change. And I’ve just been grateful for the opportunity here at American forests as the president CO2 to center this organization, to put the heft and credibility of the nation’s first forest conservation organization, put all of that weight and expertise behind forests as a climate change solution and leading the forest, leading the country forward on this issue in the way that’s needed most.

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The Web site it up one percent to call election.

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Yeah, it’s a forest climate working group, Dornberg. It talks about our activities and the various really great members that we have of that coalition. And I’m really proud that you’re here in the United States. If you go over to Capitol Hill and ask members of Congress what they think about forest, they’ll they’ll tell you that the forest networking working group is kind of their first first resource. First stop for shaping their opinions and getting information about what what we should do. So we really, I think, created a very respected presence here in Washington and across the country as states and local governments and others tried to try to identify the way forward.

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And if you want to go into American Forest, then you go to American Forest dot org.

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That’s great, right, Jed? And we’re going to end this by. I’m gonna love you, too. I have a favorite question I often ask and that this.

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Is there anything that you think that most people don’t know or understand that you would like for more people to understand about the climate or about the forest or in general?

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So I’m going to just tell you off the front, I’m going to cheat because I think there are two things here absolutely critical that people need to know and they are connected. So it’s sort of like one answer up. The first thing is something I said at the very beginning, and I really want to underscore this. Forests and forest products here in the United States are already a climate change solution. And often people will say, well, we need to make our forests a climate change solution. And the reality is they already are providing a really substantial climate change solution.

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And we think that’s really important because sometimes when we face skepticism about, well, is it should we invest in forests? Can we afford to invest in forests and invest in, for example, clean energy? And we feel very strongly it’s not an either or. We need an all of the above strategy on climate change. We need every single thing that we can do to solve climate change.

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We need to be doing it. And we know that our forests can solve climate change because it’s happening right now. And we know exactly what it is that we need to do more of, like planting more trees, like making our forests more resilient to wildfire. All of these actions that if we take them together, can make our forests an even bigger solution to climate change than they are right now. But I want to give you something that we haven’t talked about too much. That is the, I think, surprise for a lot of people. And in terms of where we can find solutions to climate change in our forests. And it’s right outside my window here in Washington, D.C., I’m staring down at a little park across the street from our office where our organization a number of decades ago planted some small little trees here in Washington, D.C., that have now grown up into these beautiful trees that arch over the city streets. And this park here in Washington, D.C.. The urban forests in the United States capture nearly 20 percent of the carbon that we’re capturing in our forests in total, so a fifth of the carbon capture in trees and forests here in the United States is actually happening in cities, in urban areas. And that really surprises people. But the even bigger kicker on that in terms of solving climate change is that those same trees and forests reduce energy use for heating and cooling in people’s homes.

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By seven point two percent. That not only saves billions of dollars for homeowners, but it saves millions and millions of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions that would otherwise be created by generating that energy. So when you take the combined benefit of urban for us for capturing carbon through the process of sequestration, like us everywhere, and then you add in these energy savings that we get urban forests or one of the most powerful climate solutions that we have and that really surprises people. And then when you add in the critical role the urban forests play in protecting people from climate change. For example, the impacts of extreme heat on our cities and the role that urban forests play in cooling our streets and in cleaning the air. You put all that together and suddenly you say urban forests are climate action plus climate justice and incredibly powerful ways for our future. So it’s really important to us that people say forests are proven solution to climate change. We have to make this investment if we’re going to get it right. And it has to be all trees and forests, including in cities.