Evolution of Consciousness

Editor,

I was pleased to see Bruce Patterson bring up the idea of MRC generating power rather than poisoning our environment. I’ve recently been urging the folks at Mendocino Redwood Company (and our Board of Supervisors) to pursue a similar course. MRC could start the process by simply installing a small generator at their Ukiah mill (like many other lumber mills already do).

To give an idea of the scope of this local situation, here’s some round figures. One cord of tanoak yields 27.5 million BTUs, or the same amount of energy as 300 gallons of propane. Annually, MRC poisons over 5,000 acres of forest: more than a million trees. That represents over 200,000 cords of hardwood, containing almost six trillion BTUs. It would take more than 60 million gallons of propane to generate the same amount of energy.

A couple bonus points. Burning wood is carbon neutral, part of the natural carbon cycle on our planet (unlike fossil fuels, which perniciously continue adding carbon to the atmosphere). Tanoak, like redwood, readily sprouts back after being cut, making it a rather ideal renewable source of cleaner energy, if properly managed.

With this one decision, we can stop this wholesale steady poisoning of our local environment, reduce greenhouse emissions, eliminate the need for other environmental disasters (such as fracking and nuclear), and help speed our transition to solar, wind, and hydro.

Mike Kalantarian

Navarro

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 27th, 2013 at 4:11 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.