There is considerable debate about how emissions from various activities such as industry or agriculture must be greatly reduced. If the main climate solution we identify is to try to reduce opportunities for businesses to operate then we risk shooting ourselves in the foot. Such a requirement would result in our domestic production fading away, only to re-emerge in other countries instead. The consequences of such an approach would lead to further deterioration of welfare and competitiveness here in Sweden.
The basic problem with emissions is largely the same for all sectors - namely the use of fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas. If industry, agriculture and all other sectors could somehow manage to operate without fossil fuels, carbon dioxide emissions would decrease by 75 percent. The climate issue would then largely be resolved. Another good example is our use of petroleum-based plastics. If these plastics were to be completely replaced by another material, the demand for oil would be reduced by 25 per cent.
So the biggest villain in our climate change story is unquestionably our reliance on fossil fuels. Which means we have to find alternatives and these need to be genuinely renewable sources of energy that must be able to be reused - and this can only happen by something growing back. This process of renewal can take place in water, on land or in a laboratory. The solution can, to some degree, already be found in water cultivation of, for example, algae. The majority of such cultivation, however, needs to take place on land. It is already a challenge to feed today’s growing global population with the arable land we currently have available, and it would limit food production even further by using such land to create new energy sources. We should instead use our forests to provide the solutions we need. The technology already exists in the forestry industry that makes it perfectly possible to replace all types of harmful fossil fuels. The only thing missing is a sufficient supply of raw materials from the forests themselves.
While raw materials from forestry are crucial to solving the climate issue, carbon sequestration in forests is also vitally important. As long as a forest grows it binds carbon in its trees, soil, leaves and branches . When a forest gets old it grows more slowly, and levels of carbon sequestration therefore drop. Which is why the worst possible solution is to leave old forests unused.
The fact Swedish forests annually bind huge amounts of carbon comes down to the fact that over the last hundred years they have been skillfully managed. Thanks to efficient logging instead of old-fashioned clear-cutting, forests are able to quickly and rigorously regrow. If we had decided a hundred years ago to leave our forests to serve as carbon sinks, forest growth today would be close to zero, and carbon sequestration would not exist. We would not have had the same opportunities to develop things such as timber construction products for housing, environmentally-friendly packaging and hygiene items, or create the new forms of bioenergy needed to offset our reliance on fossil fuels.
We must, of course, ensure that some ancient forests remain untouched in order to preserve a diverse range of different plants and animals. We need to protect forests of all ages because different creatures thrive best in different conditions. But instead of automatically accepting the position that no old forests must ever be cut down, I welcome an open debate about the amount of forests of different ages we should look to protect in order to preserve both biodiversity and our climate.