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It’s no secret that the peaks and rivers of Northeast Oregon are magnificent, but there is a lesser-known wonder. This corner of the state is poised to weather climate instability better than most other places. Why? There are still intact forest headwaters holding and filtering waters — vital to fish and farmer alike. The remaining big trees and ancient groves are storing tons of carbon dioxide, and sheltering both wildlife and the human spirit, too.

That’s why we must choose protection of our mature and ancient forests over false promises of biomass — the burning of trees as “renewable energy.” Biomass burning power plants emit 150% the carbon dioxide of coal, and 300%-400% of the carbon dioxide of natural gas, per unit energy produced.

The “renewable” argument goes this way — trees grow back and will then once again store carbon. But trees burned today release carbon dioxide today — and seedlings take a long time to grow and cannot come close to rivaling the carbon storage of trees that are even 30 years old, let alone a century or more. Scientific studies are conclusive that the older and bigger trees store far more carbon and for longer than young trees.

I am mystified why biomass energy is taking off in Northeast Oregon with a heavy reliance on subsidies — it’s not cost effective. There’s also the insidious argument that biomass simply uses up excess pieces of wood that would otherwise go to waste. No. Biomass creates a huge drive for wood, wood and more wood to burn. That wood comes at the expense of fish and wildlife habitat, functioning ecosystems and carbon sequestration.

Why would we want to add even more carbon dioxide into our atmosphere with some vague notion we will lower it later? Here in the West, we are in the worst megadrought in 1,200 years, according to a February 2022 report in the journal Nature Climate Change.

And that’s not all — the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) just released findings showing we are in big trouble — with billions of people around the world already suffering from sea rise, heat, flooding and extreme weather. We’re seeing the effects here, and it’s not going to get better with false solutions.

We must move quickly to reduce fossil fuel emissions and safeguard our carbon-storing trees. Instead, we’re adding a staggering 40 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide per year to the atmosphere, while we’re destroying the forests that are our allies.

But, what about the wildfires? Don’t we have to thin forests in response and why shouldn’t we then burn those trees for biomass? But here’s the problem — thinning is often a term for industrial logging that is applied not just at the wildland urban interface but across wide swathes of forests and in the backcountry. Logging makes wildfires — and the climate crisis — worse.

Wildfires may billow smoke, but the vast majority of forest carbon stays on site. Not so for biomass burned to completion. Yes, there will be more wildfires, but we live in ecosystems that have evolved with fire, but not logging. The key is to protect our communities by using our limited resources to thin small trees close to homes.

We can still keep Northeast Oregon climate-resilient and beautiful — if we act now. Protect our mature and older forests and big trees on federal lands. Explore mechanisms to pay private landowners well for keeping their trees standing. Embrace solar, wind, and energy conservation — in ways that preserve our natural ecosystems that are our last best hope.

I think we all want future generations to know the vanilla scent of a centuries-old pine and to be able to dip their toes into clear, cold, fish-filled rivers.