{"id":366477,"date":"2025-02-17T07:54:43","date_gmt":"2025-02-17T06:54:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=366477"},"modified":"2025-02-17T07:54:45","modified_gmt":"2025-02-17T06:54:45","slug":"how-ed-milibands-net-zero-fantasy-is-deforesting-north-carolina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=366477","title":{"rendered":"How Ed Miliband\u2019s Net Zero Fantasy Is Deforesting North Carolina"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From The Daily Sceptic<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0Sallust<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As everyone must now know, it doesn\u2019t matter where the energy comes from in the great rush to Net Zero, only that the source must preferably be invisible to British consumers and voters. It seems that hundreds of acres of forest are being torn down in North Carolina to produce wood-pellets that are then poured into the gaping hungry furnaces of the UK\u2019s Drax power station. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Mail<\/a> <\/em>has the story:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Some 280 acres of once pristine and ecologically-important wetland forest \u2013 a mix of oak, maple, hickory, cypress and pine \u2013 have disappeared, torn out as if by a marauding monster. All that\u2019s left is a bleak expanse of boggy pools of water and pulverised pieces of wood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s eerily reminiscent of photographs of No Man\u2019s Land at the Battle of the Somme \u2013 only with the addition of several large piles of logs that the men who harvested the lumber from this remote north-eastern corner of North Carolina in November 2023 couldn\u2019t even be bothered to take with them and left to rot.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

According to scientists and environmentalists, the idea that new trees will replace the old ones felled any time soon is a load of nonsense:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

They point out that burning wood is even dirtier in terms of carbon dioxide than coal and, more important, that it takes decades \u2013 60 or 70 years in the case of hardwood forests \u2013 for a new tree to absorb the CO2<\/sub> lost by burning the old one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s precious time, they say, that a warming planet simply doesn\u2019t have, and hardly anyone\u2019s idea of \u2018sustainable\u2019 energy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, that hasn\u2019t stopped successive UK governments, the world\u2019s most enthusiastic convert to the wonders of wood pellets, from giving billions of pounds in renewable energy subsidies to biomass operators.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Needless to say, the heroic leader of the vanguard to turn Britain into a Net Zero paradise of impoverished and frozen people is out in front to help drive this ultimate example of greenwashing:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

This week, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband became the latest politician to keep this astonishing arrangement \u2013 described by opponents as Britain\u2019s \u201cbiggest green hoax\u201d \u2013 on the road when he approved a new funding arrangement giving the vast Drax power station in North Yorkshire (the country\u2019s largest) around \u00a32 billion over four years to keep burning biomass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Miliband, the architect of the Government\u2019s drive to Net Zero, has been implicated in the Drax scandal since 2008 when he was appointed Secretary of State for the newly created Department of Energy and Climate Change by then Prime Minister Gordon Brown. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the new deal cuts Drax\u2019s subsidies in half, given all the Starmer Government has promised about tackling global warming, environmentalists had been hoping for Drax to lose all its subsidy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drax, which ironically shares its name with a James Bond villain who set out to destroy the planet, burns the equivalent of 27 million trees every year and \u2013 because wood is much dirtier even than coal \u2013 is Britain\u2019s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, last year producing nearly 12 million tons of the planet-warming gas.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
The cooling towers of the controversial Drax Group power station complex near Selby, UK<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The Mail\u2019s<\/em> Tom Leonard inspected the site in person with a local guide:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

There were no signs of new trees growing, or anyone trying to re-plant, even on one site that was logged three years ago. \u201cThis is ground zero for clearcuts \u2013 you see them appearing all the time and it\u2019s really sad,\u201d said my companion, who asked me not to use his name as \u201cthese people can be mean\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He used to go out regularly looking for new clearcut sites and then follow the lorries taking away lumber and chipped wood so that he could say with confidence that it had gone to an Enviva pellet plant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since it started importing huge quantities of pellets in 2012, Drax has relied on America\u2019s South for most of them, not only because it has vast tracts of forest close to coastal ports for easy export but also because these conservative states impose few of the regulations that protect woodland in the UK and the rest of Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Logging companies traditionally cut down only the biggest trees as they are most suitable for the building and furniture industries, leaving the smaller ones to keep growing. They also left the ecologically-precious \u2018wetland hardwood\u2019 varieties such as cypress because they were too gnarled to become planks or tables.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

It doesn\u2019t matter what your position on climate change is. The story here is the sheer hypocrisy:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Everyone I spoke to in North Carolina admitted they were slightly shocked that \u201ctree-loving\u201d and climate change-aware Britain, of all countries, had facilitated the biomass industry \u2013adopting renewable energy accounting rules that didn\u2019t account either for the forests being lost in the US or the carbon emissions from burning the wood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Derb Carter, a senior lawyer at the Southern Environmental Law Centre, told me he had repeatedly visited the UK to explain the situation to government officials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere was this assumption that surely the US regulates how forests are managed to protect the public interest,\u201d he said. The Brits were \u201csurprised\u201d, he said, when he explained that in southern states like North Carolina, there was nothing of the sort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was disappointed by Ed Miliband\u2019s verdict on Drax this week, saying: \u201cThis is not a good decision for our climate and certainly not for our forests over here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe had hoped that a new government would have taken a really hard look at this. When you\u2019re basically cutting forests and hauling them across the ocean to burn instead of coal, it makes no sense.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr Carter believes the fact that the environmental destruction happens out of sight \u2013 and therefore out of mind \u2013 has been very useful for Drax in winning British acquiescence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a lot harder to burn your own forest than someone else\u2019s,\u201d he says. \u201cPeople are going to be a lot more tolerant if the wood pellets just show up on a ship and you don\u2019t see the trees being cut and don\u2019t see the forest being lost.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Just like buying solar panels and batteries from China, where the coal power stations providing the energy to manufacture them are conveniently out of sight, and allowing China to gain a chokehold on the UK renewables sector<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The North Carolina story is worth reading in full<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As everyone must now know, it doesn\u2019t matter where the energy comes from in the great rush to Net Zero, only that the source must preferably be invisible to British consumers and voters. It seems that hundreds of acres of forest are being torn down in North Carolina to produce wood-pellets that are then poured into the gaping hungry furnaces of the UK\u2019s Drax power station.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":366484,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691819097,691821596,691831484,691833334,691818154,691833333],"class_list":{"0":"post-366477","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-climate-hypocrisy","9":"tag-deforestation","10":"tag-energy-secretary-ed-miliband","11":"tag-green-hoax","12":"tag-net-zero","13":"tag-uks-drax-power-station","15":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/010-Drone-shot-Enviva-Ahoskie-1200x800-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1xkV","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":398736,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=398736","url_meta":{"origin":366477,"position":0},"title":"UK\u2019s 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