About the future of wood: I have some good news. And I have some bad news. And both are called Mass Timber Construction.
In brief, you may have heard that in parts of Europe, high-rise office and apartment buildings are being constructed of wood. This is a decades-old story in places like Sweden.
Now, you're likely to read about those projects taking off in the US, and along with those reports, you'll read legitimate praise for the good things that come from building with CLT—Compressed Laminate Timber. There are a number of genuine pluses to construction with giant slabs of wood when compared to construction with poured slabs of concrete (and sand) and girders of steel.
Wooden Buildings Reach for the Sky in Sweden: NYT
You'll also read the green hopes by the Mass Timber champions (most loudly, those who stand to do the work or otherwise profit from this new technique) how sound this new biomaterials construction is with regard to taking carbon out of the atmosphere. It also is a sustainable forestry practice, they claim, that actually makes forests stronger by thinning thick stands, by using building materials from forests at hand, etc.
If only this building boom did not offer to sell the foundation to pay for the mortgage.
In long articles that would seem to attempt to explore both the pros and the cons, you might find the negatives only at the end, in relatively brief summary fashion, and with a dismissive wave that "we'll figure out how to fix all these negatives because this is just too cool to not make use of, full speed ahead."
Granted, it does seem cool.
In defense of the brevity of the CONS in current publications is that fact that we don't know the full life-cycle impact this surge in need for timber will have, long term and biosphere-wide, on the ecological services that presently-regenerating or mature forests will have.
But the voices for full-speed-ahead in spite of these uncertainties are far louder than those who council restraint. If it CAN be done it SHOULD be done, many banners would read.
The Natural Resources Defense Council eludes to the future of vastly more heavily harvested boreal forest as "Pandora's Box" that will release massive amounts of previously uncounted carbon into the atmosphere.
The net CO2 budget for Mass Timber needs to be computed over a 50 year forest cycle, and it seems there are far more short-term than long-term visionaries in the mix. Imagine that!
YALE360 reports that "Mass timber construction is on the rise, with advocates saying it could revolutionize the building industry and be part of a climate change solution. But some question whether the carbon costs in logging and manufacturing required to produce the new material outweigh any benefits."
From that article, some of those who caution against rushing into a mass timber future offer this caveat:
“We want to debunk the myth that mass timber is in any way, shape, or form related to some kind of environmental benefit,” said John Talberth, president of the Center for Sustainable Economy, which is based near Portland. “That’s simply not true.”
The short phrase in the Yale360 article that stuck with me here summarizes my worst (and not unsubstantiated) fears:
MASS TIMBER MEANS MASS EXTINCTION
I know that sounds like a protest banner, but I’m not above protesting when I sense danger ahead. Here's the bottom line for me:
Engineers, contractors, CEOs of development corporations and even a large slice of academically trained forestry boffins in the "sustainability" segment are either ignorant of or willfully looking past the reality that our historical planetary forests have been the nurseries for the evolution of terrestrial plant and animal biodiversity.
Current and future stands of fast growing genetically identical softwoods as "tree plantations” are not the forests whose biology works to keep Earth systems in balance.
We already see the rapid dwindling of base-of-the-foodchain insect species. We at or beyond tipping points and at the verge of crisis cascades—overlapping Humpty Dumpty changes that all the kings horses will not be able to repair, once broken. Profitability and increased efficiency seem once more to blind us to our dependence on a nature that we can destroy but cannot replace.
Forests (as intact working ecosystems, not mere fragmented woodlots) are living entities whose environmental services are legion and essential to life. They provide you and me with an immense volume of atmospheric oxygen. They hold gigatons of water in their soils and roots, and forests clean and release it slowly into seeps and creeks and rivers. They cool the air and they hold massive amounts of CO2 that would otherwise be a greenhouse atmospheric gas.
The dynamic benefits from a sustainable forest diminish as it is fragmented, impacted by road building, altered by monoculture planting and by short cycles of "timber extraction" that will be even shorter in the future since MASS TIMBER can and will use smaller trees, encouraging an even faster rotation cycle.
Add to all this the fact that forests are already stressed and many failing due to climate-chaos thermal changes, moisture changes, invasive plants and animals, and heat-and-drought related diseases and pests; and stressed by aggressive exploitation for other wizz-bang high-profit uses of "forest products" like wood chips to burn in European power plants. I thought I had seen the worst for the future of forests. But wait! There's more!
If you know anything about the history of civilizations as they have ascended and then fallen, the fall (a slow emergency that often takes decades) is alarmingly connected to how those societies (mis)treated their forests, water and soil. So let me just paint with a broad brush here:
🔥 As the forests go up in flames—or ten story condos—so goes the future. 🔥
Finally, below, a well-reasoned rationale (to offset my impassioned snark) for how we could potentially take advantage of MTC (Mass Timber Construction) and NOT create unsustainable losses to our forests’ biological benefits.
I fear the hopes expressed here (of putting forest health ahead of profitability) don’t stand much of a chance in today’s growth economy controlled by self-serving shareholders, but it is a more positive spin than I have offered above.
FROM: Complex Nature: Implications for Forests with the Rise of Mass Timber Construction
Future of Forests and MTC
If making clear choices that stand up to scrutiny is important to consumers, it is up to them to decide what is acceptable as responsibly sourced timber, and then to keep demanding high quality oversight, just as they do with other products, such as coffee, cotton, and seafood. It is up to the design and construction industry to work with foresters and ecologists to ensure that the future of MTC promotes silvicultural standards that do not masquerade as forest substitutes, but provide timber in ways that maximize biodiversity, even to the detriment of profits. Ideally this approach also augments carbon sequestration.
Virgin forests should remain off-limits, and the reestablishment and protection of old-growth forests promoted. When possible, these areas should be linked with national parks, preserves, and wildlife crossings over major infrastructure that create unbroken wildlife corridors.9 This method will probably not maximize monetary profits, which is why it is important to define our priorities.
Happily, the general consensus is that by nearly every measure, MTC is an excellent choice for construction, although it will not entirely replace steel and concrete (rather, these material choices make excellent hybrid structures). It should be included in the building code and its increased use should be encouraged by supporting research, experimentation, and certification for it as a safe and desirable building system. If this is the moment when we decide to increase the use of wood in our cities through MTC, then there is no better moment to ensure we do not allow this rush to cause more deforestation in the name of “sustainability.”
FURTHER READING
Do high-rises built from wood guarantee climate benefits? | InvestigateWest
Sustainable building: The hottest new material is, uh, wood - Vox