To the Journal editor:

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer just announced that the Michigan Department of Natural Resources will be rolling out a pilot carbon credit program. In the nation’s first carbon project on state forestland, Michigan forests will be managed to maximize carbon sequestration while being profitably managed for resource production.

This balanced approach provides the much needed (and now profitable) service of reducing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere while recognizing the value of forest products.

Voluntary programs like this aren’t new. The Nature Conservancy runs a similar program which works with companies to manage woodlands through reduced cuttings, in order to increase the lands potential to drawdown carbon.

The decrease (but not elimination) of logging on these lands doesn’t reduce revenue potential because corporations pay for the extra carbon sequestered as their way to help reverse climate change.

Microsoft, for example, has committed to not only reducing it’s emissions to net zero, but actually below zero by 2030. Through forestry, direct air capture, and other means, they’ve pledge to sequester all the carbon that they’ve emitted since the company’s start by 2050.

Climate scientists across the globe have indicated that we must get behind these efforts now in order to cost effectively reverse the disastrous effects that we are and will increasingly witness from climate change.

The governor deserves praise for this action and her 2019 executive directive entering Michigan into the U.S. Climate Alliance, after … the U.S. (was) the only country to leave the Paris Climate Agreement.

Please take the time to help ensure our planet remains a livable place for future generations. Become part of the solution at cclusa.org.

Sincerely,