Regarding the points that former Clallam County Commissioner Phillip Kitchel makes in his March 28 letter to Peninsula Voices [“No Wild Olympics”], he suffers from a failure to see the forest for the trees.
Despite our human intentions, the clearly demonstrated intention of our forest ecosystem is to grow.
The forests on the North Olympic Peninsula are among the most productive ecosystems anywhere in the world.
Driven by the absorption of solar energy, the forest ecosystem provides a valuable source of oxygen.
It also provides a valuable sink of carbon dioxide, which we humans are currently producing too much of in the Earth’s atmosphere.
Phillip Kitchel neglects accounting for the value of this sink in the economic analysis presented in his letter.
The most recent measurement of this sink rate in Clallam County was 2.2 tons per acre per year, according to the April-May 2011 Journal of Forestry.
Currently, the cost to our society from the damage done by the release of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere is about $40 per ton, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
Examples of this cost are the damages incurred by the increased incidence of wildfires attributable to climate change.
For every ton of carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere by our forests, we are saving the nation $40.
At this rate, the 581,000 acres of the Olympic National Forest that is not being harvested is providing a service to the nation worth $51 million per year.
Phillip Kitchel’s efforts would be better directed toward increasing the Olympic National Forest reserves with proposals such as that for the Wild Olympics.
A national carbon tax that includes compensation to the Olympic Peninsula for the cost of managing its forests for continued growth would be a way to fund this undertaking.
Jerry Estberg,
Port Angeles
EDITOR’S NOTE: Estberg is a professor emeritus of physics at the University of San Diego.