I know I said I was going to write about “how to create a wasteless industry using renewable energy as the solution” in this issue.  However, I received an email from a reader requesting more detailed information on “carbon cycle.” It made me think of an article I just read in Mother Jones, and I thought I would use it to respond to his request.

I read Mother Jones regularly – cover to cover.  Most of my friends think this makes me a “flaming” liberal. I mean, really, a flaming liberal!  That can’t be further from the truth. I’m not, I promise. But I love good writing.  Most of all, I enjoy topics that are meaningful and leave a message. Indeed, sometimes the inferred message is more effective than the slam-dunk.  You get all of this in Mother Jones.  A recent article in the May/June issue is a great lead into this column’s subject, carbon cycle. It’s a bit more about the pine bark beetle, the same rascal that I mentioned in last month’s column. The article by Maddie Oatman calls the pine beetle a “super bug.” Surely the Emeral Ash Bore and the Dutch Elm disease (elm bark beetles) that destroyed the American elm tree are just as bad. Well, the reason they are successful is because we humans have upset the carbon cycle. Let me try to explain.

The carbon cycle is a finely tuned machine. All living things contain carbon, this includes us, humans.  When organisms die and are buried – us, leaves, etc., carbon becomes locked in the soil, where fossil fuels can form.  Trillions of tons of carbon remain locked up in reservoirs, in vegetation, in oceans, in fossil fuels like coal and gas.  That’s fine, if everything is in harmony.  However, if activity causes an increased release of carbon into the atmosphere from those reservoirs, the equilibrium is disrupted, the carbon cycle and our natural system is at risk.  If we have global warming, the polar ice caps melt more quickly and oceans rise, and super bugs can live and destroy trees, which would otherwise help to sequester carbon. We lose the equilibrium. 

I found a wonderful carbon cycle illustration in one of my files. It was compiled by Brooke Borel and Clara Chaisson, titled Visualization by Pitch Interactive, and it notes everything that affects our carbon cycle: fossil fuels, geology, terrestrial vegetation, humans and oceans. Each, in its own way, contributes to the total amount of carbon in the atmosphere.  Once the balance is upset, the carbon cycle is upset.  This causes rising oceans, global warming, weather extremes (imbalances), super bug infestation, droughts and fires, and so on. What scientists now believe is that a continuing build up of greenhouse gas has created the “great carbon dioxide catastrophe.”  We still have a few years, but if we don’t make changes to the volume of CO2 that is entering the atmosphere, we will cause irreparable damage to the carbon cycle.

I know this is complicated, but it leads to a series of questions posed by Andrew Renkin in that Audubon article that I referenced in my last column.  Given global population growth, how do we develop a sustainable two-way relationship with the atmosphere and climate?  How do we provide “sustainable” energy for the three billion people who don’t have electricity for cooking and heating? How do we limit global warming but also provide for the future needs of our global society?  What about the relationship between GMOs and the need to produce more food for the world’s hungry? We need a more realistic view of energy and our global needs. Trying to push reductions in emissions from coal fired boilers without alternatives that meet financial models doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but that’s an entirely different issue. Bottom line, if we don’t create harmony between all parties, the carbon cycle will be destroyed and super bugs will rule the day.  Hah, I’ll bet you thought I was so “carbonized” I’d forget the superbug!

Did you know that there are 6,000 species of bark beetles, 500 living here in the US and Canada?  Yup, that’s right – 500 here.  To be fair, they’re not all super bugs, or killer beetles, the title coined by Maddie Oatman of Mother Jones.  But, if you read the same journals I do, you realize how devastating the pine bark beetle has become to our western North American forests.  The pine bark beetle has destroyed almost 60 million of the 850 million acres of forested land in the northwest. Because warming trends and drought have added to the longevity of the beetle, the blight seems to be moving eastward.  Inexorably, the problem is growing.

Mother Jones set me off.  However, I’d been reading about the pine bark beetle in National Geographic, Audubon, and Nature Conservancy. The same names of the research fellows and entomologists appeared in all these publications, which indicate the experts are in agreement.  As usual, they come together in agreement that federal solutions are not working. Read further to understand their theory. When we had balance, when the carbon cycle was in sync, the forests were able to live in harmony with the beetle.  As warmer winters occurred, the beetles multiplied in huge numbers.

When a female mountain pine beetle locates a frail tree, she emits a chemical signal to her friends, who swarm to her by the hundreds.  Together they chew through the bark until they reach the phloem, a cushy resinous layer between the outer bark and the sapwood that carries sugars through the tree.  There, they lay their eggs in tunnels, and eventually a new generation of beetles hatches, grows up, and flies away. But before they do, the mature beetles also spread a special fungus in the center of the trunk.

The fungus is carried in the beetle’s mouth and converts the tree’s tissue into food for the beetle’s eggs, which later become larvae, then become pupae, and eventually grow into adult beetles.  The fungi leave blue-grey streaks, by the way.  It’s not the streaks that kill the tree; it’s the fungi and the fact that the beetle is producing millions and millions of eggs that don’t die but are allowed to go through the different stages of their life cycle.  The eggs survive because our climate is warmer.

If you study the problem, you’ll learn that our United States Forest Service (USFS) has decided the best defense is to cut and burn. They are chopping down trees and burning them before they can become infected. Remember 50 years ago when that same group fought forest fires, believing that natural cycle should be contained with man-made solutions? Today we manage forest fires (I’m not referring to those in California, by the way!) by letting them burn naturally, watching nature replenish itself with new growth.

Loggers, if they can get these trees before they’ve burned are real happy.  And politicians, who don’t know a damn thing about natural solutions, are supporting the USFS cut and burn theory.  Obviously, this process supports their constituents.

One expert, Diana Six, has a different theory: Six believes that the blitz on the bugs could backfire in a big way. For starters, she says, cutting trees “quite often removes more trees than the beetles would” – effectively outbeetling the beetles. But more importantly, intriguing evidence suggests that the bugs might be on the forest’s side. Six and other scientists are beginning to wonder:  What if the insects that have wrought this devastation actually know more than we do about adapting to a changing climate? A healthy tree can usually beat back invading beetles by deploying chemical defenses and flooding them out with sticky resin.  But just as dehydration makes humans weaker, heat and drought impede a tree’s ability to fight back – less water means less resin.

I trust I haven’t bored you. If you tracked through this, you’ll realize how delicate nature is. Drought creates dehydration, which weakens resistance to disease.  Indeed, as our industry continues to grow and respond to new applications and material requirements, it is my fervent wish that we make natural process an overriding priority.  We can’t keep adding petrochemical technology without providing solutions for end of life.  I believe our industry has to help balance the carbon cycle by engaging and dialoguing with the brand owner. Design for positive end of life and become part of the CDP (carbon disclosure project), which helps clarify and define emissions and waste. Today, 500-plus major corporations are now measuring and disclosing their carbon emission. It uses common methodology so everyone is measuring apples to apples. The objective is to reduce carbon emissions. If all industry will focus on CO2 reduction it will help eradicate the killer beetle.

Another Letter from the Earth.




Calvin Frost is chairman of Channeled Resources Group, headquartered in Chicago, the parent company of Maratech International and GMC Coating. His email address [email protected].