Comment
Wood pellets are NOT 'clean electricity' - in fact, burning wood pellets is dirtier than coal at the smokestack. The Ontario government cannot intentionally deceive the public to justify expanding a climate-destroying industry.
Whole trees from primary, boreal forests are being logged to manufacture wood pellets, not just 'waste wood' as the government claims. There is no world in which increased deforestation is a climate solution.
One of the key objectives (objective 3) of this action plan includes, “streamline permitting and reduce regulatory burden for all sectors which use forest biomass.” This would be absolutely devastating, leaving few environmental checkpoints in a province that has already gutted the Endangered Species Act, a key regulatory body.
The Ontario government cannot bill these jobs as 'clean' alternatives for fossil fuel workers when this industry is even more carbon-polluting than what it's replacing. It will take centuries to recover the forests as a crucial carbon sink - time we simply do not have.
Wood pellets are a completely false climate solution. The government must recognize this and adapt accordingly. The public will not believe attempted greenwashing of 'solutions' that create more even more damage and lead to environmental catastrophe.
Submitted June 21, 2021 4:41 PM
Comment on
Ontario’s Draft Forest Biomass Action Plan
ERO number
019-3514
Comment ID
57611
Commenting on behalf of
Comment status