From:                                         Polly Ryan <pollyryanlane@gmail.com>

Sent:                                           Friday, July 26, 2019 11:32 AM

To:                                               RPS, DOER (ENE)

Subject:                                     RPS Class I and Class II Comments

 

To Our public servants in DOER, and in the Baker administration;

 

Plants are the ROOTS to all life.  WHY? Because they are OXYGEN factories and enable the survival of all life that depends on  O2 like Homo sapiens.

Some recent headlines that show how climate change affects PLANT LIFE.

1. Climate Impacts on Forests : EPA

2. Germany's forests on the verge of collapse, experts report : DW.com
Note the paragraph on 'Dramatic tree deaths'

What Dohle of the forestry trade union termed "dramatic tree deaths" began with winter snow dumps in early 2018 which broke branches, weakening the trees' natural defenses and letting in fungal infections, "followed by drought and bark beetle infestation" that killed off European spruce trees.

One million older trees have since died — not only heat susceptible spruces, but even Germany's prized European Red Beech which had been widely planted over the past decade in the hope of creating climate stable forests, Dohle added.

3. Can planting trees save our climate? : www.realclimate.org

Note the comment in this paragragh;

We can also compare the “negative emissions” from tree planting to our other emissions. The 200 GtC would be less than one third of the 640 GtC total emissions, not two thirds. And the authors of the new study say that it would take fifty to one hundred years for the thousand billion trees to store 200 GtC – an average of 2 to 4 GtC per year, compared to our current emissions of 11 GtC per year. That’s about one-fifth to one-third – and this proportion will decrease if emissions continue to grow. This sounds quite different from the prospect of solving two-thirds of the climate problem with trees. And precisely because reforestation takes a very long time, it should be taboo today to cut down mature, species-rich forests, which are large carbon reservoirs and a valuable treasure trove of biological diversity.

4. Coral With Leaves: Millions of Trees Joining the List of Climate Change Casualties : Inside Climate News

Mass die-offs in California, the Southwest and Europe are not only tied to global warming by new studies, they will add to it. A recent aerial survey by the U.S. Forest Service tallied 26 million more dead trees in Southern and Central California between last October and April.

5. Climate change drives tree mortality : ScienceMagazine.org

6. Forests and climate change : IUCN – International Union for Conservation of Nature

Note: What can be done?
Combatting deforestation and forest degradation in areas of high biodiversity and cultural significance, such as primary forests and World Heritage sites.

Restoring forest landscapes helps enhance climate change mitigation and adaptation

All this explains why using wood as fuel (which emits CO2 rather than keeping it sequestered in the tree) is a very bad idea. WE CANNOT AFFORD TO DELIBERATELY BURN ONE MORE TREE!

Thank you for accepting my comments and giving this the consideration needed to ultimately insure our survival!

Polly Ryan
11 Windsor Avenue
Cummington, MA 01026