October 1, 2009

A member of the Natural Lands Trust told members of the
Brandywine Conservancy Thursday night that climate change is real and
undeniable, but planting trees can help solve the problem.

Andrew Pitz, a vice president with NLT spoke at a
subscribers’ meeting in the lecture room at the Brandywine River Museum. The
meeting was the third in a series of four on sustainability.

“We all know that climate change is a problem now. It’s
widely accepted and the point I’m trying to make is that land and water
conservation has a very important role to play in dealing with climate change,”
Pitz said.

Energy efficiency and alternative energy sources get more
publicity, he said, but many emissions are due to land use changes.

“That’s an area where land conservation can play an
important role,” Pitz said.

He explained that clearing forests depletes nature’s ability
to absorb carbon, adding to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

“If you cut down trees, you eventually release C0₂
(carbon dioxide.) As much as 40 percent of the C0₂ that we’ve put
into the atmosphere may be due to forest clearing,” said Pitz. “Currently, in
the U.S. it’s about 20 percent.”

Pitz said that before industrialization there was a balance
between the amount of C0₂ mammals put into the atmosphere and what
plantsutilized, but today the problem is with the use of fossil
fuels.

“There are two main problems, burning fossil fuels and
taking down trees,” he said. “Trees store a lot of carbon. If you cut them
down, eventually they rot and they wind up in the atmosphere.”

Managing forests is key, said Pitz. Today forests in the
U.S. hold only about 20 percent of the amount of carbon they held before the
white man came to the Americas.

“That’s because we manage them for production, not for
carbon sequestration and biodiversity 
values,” he said.

But managing forests is just one part of the solution. Individuals
can help, too. He said that people in the general Chadds Ford area, the rural
parts of western Delaware and southern Chester counties can plant trees to help
remediate the problem.

“If you live on a one-acre suburban lot… then plant trees. A
16-inch sugar maple stores two-and-a-half tons of carbon. So that’s quite a
bit. We have a lot of suburban areas where a lot of carbon can be stored in
beautiful trees that can enhance people’s values,” Pitz said.

Municipalities can take a role, too, according to Pitz,
especially when it comes to development.

“From a climate perspective, it would be better to
concentrate [development] near mass transit so people could use trains. We have
a pretty good mass transit system in the Philadelphia region….Where denser
populations are, there’s actually less emissions per capita by a significant
amount than in areas where the population is spread out,” said Pitz.

He added that new houses should be energy efficient.

Pitz told the audience that current levels of carbon can be
brought down, but if current trends continue, Pennsylvania, where there are
currently up to  20 days per year
where temperatures get into the 
90s, that number could increase 
to 40 days, or even 90 days by the ends of the century.