LETTER

Alternative facts

 

Just when you think that the bilious outpourings of corporate finger puppets can’t possibly get more inane, they manage to outdo themselves! That the creative fiction exuded by Richard Walker and Steph Troughton (Forest Products Association of Canada) claiming that “the use of wood in buildings and infrastructure…addresses climate change” could be taken as truth by increasingly large numbers of people incapable of distinguishing fact from “alternative fact” is truly terrifying.

These two hired guns for big business may have been stars in their marketing classes, but they would have failed Science 101. To be clear, the ability of trees to store carbon not only ends at the exact moment they are cut down, but the hewing, processing, transporting and use of said “products” create huge amounts of carbon, pollutants, other greenhouse gases (especially when a significant portion of these products end up in landfills or strewn across the landscape).

Moreover, the replacement of natural forests with “buildings” that are part and parcel of the agenda of never-ending-unsustainable growth promoted by the Richards and Stephs of the world ensure that our forests will never be left alone long enough to store any significant amount of carbon.    

David Desjardins
Aylmer