October 27, 2009
It was heartwarming to see so many citizens gathered at the Legislative Building on Saturday to convince our political leaders to take tough action on climate change. While the Manitoba government is making strong efforts to reduce CO2 emissions, their plan is incomplete. It is critical to include large-scale boreal wilderness conservation as part of Manitoba’s climate-change action plan. The boreal forest is Earth’s largest land-based storehouse of carbon. Our boreal forest stores more than 186 billion tons of carbon—27 years’ worth of global carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. But when the boreal forest is developed or logged, its ability to absorb and store carbon is lost or reduced, which degrades its ability to help moderate our climate.
Ron Thiessen
Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society