Here’s a deal: Trees make money just standing around

Selling carbon credits sounds farfetched, but the process could be one of the best things ever to happen to Baker County’s private forests.

It could benefit a somewhat larger area, too — the Earth.

Oregon is one of three states picked to participate in a carbon credits pilot project through the Chicago Climate Exchange.

Here’s how the market works:

Companies and other entities that emit airborne carbon, and thus contribute to climate change, can buy credits from people who own forests, which absorb carbon and hold it in the trees so the element doesn’t foul the atmosphere.

Or to paraphrase, polluters pay people to counteract the effects of pollution.

The carbon credits market could allow Baker County’s private forest owners to pull off a pretty neat feat: make money from their land without having to cut down the trees.

That scenario is preferable to one which sometimes happens — forest owners forced to log heavily so they can pay their property taxes or other expenses.

Intact forests not only keep carbon out of the air, they shelter wildlife, prevent erosion and reduce evaporation.

The ability to sell carbon credits might, however, encourage some forest owners to log their land. And although this seems contrary, cutting trees could benefit our environment just as much as leaving trees does.

That’s because thousands of acres of forest in Eastern Oregon contain more trees than is ideal.

These overcrowded forests are susceptible to insects and disease.

Which means the forests are susceptible to fire.

And even one fire can spew thousands of pounds of carbon into the atmosphere.

Trouble is, some forest owners can’t afford to thin their thickets because such work can cost more than the logs are worth.

But selling carbon credits might allow landowners to swing such a deal.

Everybody wins in that case.

The forest owner makes money.

So do the loggers who fell the trees and the truck drivers who haul the logs and the millworkers who saw the logs into lumber.

The forest is healthier and more likely to continue keeping carbon out of the air.

The remaining trees grow faster, and as they grow they can hold more carbon.

Our pessimistic streak compels us to consider the possibility that the lure of carbon credits could convince forest owners to forever spare their land from the chain saw.

This could in theory finish off the region’s timber industry, which has already taken all the blows it can absorb.

Yet the carbon credits market seems to have an answer for even that negative consequence.

Trees retain some value in that market even after they’ve been cut because the wood, so long as it’s not burned, continues to sequester its carbon.

Those 2-by-4s, it turns out, aren’t so bad for the environment after all.