Please note also: Activist groups issued a consensus statement about halting deforestation on June 9 at climate talks in Bonn, Germany. The consensus called for measures to be included in the Copenhagen protocol "to reduce consumption of forest products." The Copenhagen protocol should also exclude "any form of carbon offsetting," the statement said.
The emphasis here was on tropical forests, but BC's wilderness also preserves biodiversity, sinks carbon and produces oxygen. In urban areas, the heat-island effect of paving must be mitigated by maintaining comprehensive canopies, and leaving space for them by tailoring development rules accordingly.
Update: In his speech introducing the B.C. Government's new budget (Sept. 1st) the Minister of Finance says we will get out of our deficit situation next year by making huge increases in sales of forest products (to the American building market). In other words, we'll cut the forests down to boost the economy. Obviously, the Liberal Party of B.C. hasn't heard what the experts were saying at the Bonn climate change talks -- even though with their carbon tax on gas they pass themselves off as pro-active on global warming. The problem is that it is not the ordinary driver who is driving climate change, but the forest industry and the meat industry. Yet the B.C. Government actually supports and stimulates them.