Where do we get good ideas, and what do we do with them? Where is pretty easy – for example consider reading “The Greenhouse Gas and Carbon Profile of the Global Forest Industry” by the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement in the USA. Heavy going, maybe, but it is more fun than Special Report 06-04 titiled “Considerations on the Use of Toxic Equivalency Factors (TEFs)” by the same organization.
Someone in Northern Ontario should be reading the greenhouse report and figuring out what it tells us. But even if we knew what to do, could we even decide to do it?
After all, Northern Ontario has no brain – in the sense of democratic institutions with the power to make decisions.
We are run from Queen’s Park. We are just the tail of the dog. The brontosaurus that had a separate brain for its tail, but Queen’s Park doesn’t have even that much processing capacity for Northern Ontario. The premier himself couldn’t tell you how much Queen’s Park collects from Northern Ontario or how much they spend. No one is in charge of coming up with a coherent plan.
So why bother slogging through these reports? If you have no real influence, why waste your time learning about ways to make the North more productive? So what if a little light goes on in your head? So what if you start to dream up ways to turn Northern forests into a solution to the climate problem that Prime Minister Harper discovered in February?
What if you thought about replacing the fuel used in logging trucks with biodiesel made from wood? That is a pretty modest idea. It is quite a small amount of fuel in the big picture, but it would make the forestry sector an environmental champion. It is actually pretty tame. CVRD is doing it with all the locomotives that move iron ore in southeastern Brazil. We can be at least as progressive in Northern Ontario, can’t we?
Or we could be a bit more creative. We could combine the biodiesel program with a technology from the University of Georgia. They have a biofuel derived from wood chips and pellets that has carbon as a by-product.
The pyrolysis process is actually an improvement on the ancient technique for producing charcoal. New research in agriculture and archaeology shows that powdered charcoal can be added to forest soils to make them much more productive.
The charcoal to soil produces a rich black soil called terra praeta in the Amazon Basin (look it up on the web).
Combining the old and the new, we get reduced emissions, increased forest production and increase carbon storage.
We also get Northern jobs. But who will do it?
It’s easy to find other terrific and workable ideas for developing the North. Like the terra-praeta/pyrosis/biodiesel plan, the plans take a certain amount of central decision making.
For example, why wouldn’t Northern municipalities pass motions requiring all Northern civic buildings to be built with Northern wood and featuring wood as a central design element? Building with wood is environmentally responsible.
Wood is a wonderful material to work with. The future of the North depends on moving into value added wood products and the world demands more and more wood. Why aren’t we systematically developing the local market and local talents?
Every year the mayors could get together and give prizes for public buildings that get national attention for the quality of their designs.
They could give booby prizes to communities that use materials that are less environmentally sound. They could award scholarships to young people who develop innovative forest products and wood designs.
Mayor Angelo Bazzoni of White River has suggested creating a strictly Northern Ontario version of the old WoodWorks program that promotes wood use nationally. If you have it and you don’t flaunt it you probably won’t sell it either.
The limiting factor is leadership. The question is not “is it possible?” That’s been answered for years. It’s not “how do we do it?” The question is “who is going to do it?” The North needs to be able to make decisions.
Dave Robinson is an economist with the Institute for Northern Ontario Research at Laurentian University.
