FORKS — Evening Talks at the Olympic Natural Resource Center, initially scheduled for Oct. 14 with Bruce Lippke of the University of Washington’s School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, has been rescheduled for 7 tonight.
Lippke will speak at ONRC, 1455 S. Forks Ave., about how to keep fossil emissions out of the atmosphere and policy impacts on those carbon emissions.
Lippke will discuss the Washington I-732 citizens initiative to tax fossil carbon emissions in relation to its potential to become a global leader in developing environmental-enhancing policies.
Lippke’s position is that fossil carbon emissions continue to increase, raising the risk of impacts from climate change on the ocean, vegetation, species habitat and even wildfire. He believes that we have technologies that remove carbon emissions from the atmosphere, but most policies fail to use them and cause more harm than good.
His position is that current carbon cap and trade policies promote paying tree farmers not to harvest trees for the temporary benefit of a little more growth before maturity.
His research brings him to the position that to reduce carbon accumulations in the atmosphere, farmers should be encouraged to harvest the trees before growth slows down and have them processed into structural products that are used instead of fossil-intensive products.
Unlike carbon offset trades, a tax on fossil carbon emissions will increase the price of all products proportional to their fossils emissions, which provides a market advantage for carbon-negative alternatives. He believes every tax has income and consumption implications, so an option that ensures income tax neutrality is needed.
Lippke is the former director of the Rural Technology Initiative.
The Rural Technology Initiative was a center focused on assisting small-forest land owners with multiple resources with their understanding of new research findings and responding to changing environmental regulation.
He is also past president of CORRIM (Consortium for Research on Renewable Industrial Materials). CORRIM is a university-led research consortium analyzing every environmental impact from using wood.
For more information, contact Frank Hanson at fsh2@uw.edu.
