Dogwood Alliance wants to set the record straight about what Southerners affected by the biomass industry actually think about the increased capacity for sending our forests away to be burned.
Responding to public pressure and signaling progress in a years-long environmental campaign, the European Commission (EC) today took a step toward curtailing the dangerous, continent-wide expansion of burning trees to generate electricity by proposing to remove misguided subsidies for large-scale biomass from its renewable energy policies.
October 19th is the International Day of Action on Bioenergy. Today we recognize Southern US forests at the international level for the way they protect us from climate change and storms like Hurricane Matthew, but we also recognize the ways that the bioenergy industry is exploiting our forests.
We were lucky enough to hang out in the cool town of Athens, GA with other like-minded folks who were eager to learn more about how they can protect the forests in their backyard. This year, even more so, because three new wood pellet mills are proposed in and around the Athens area, which would clearcut Georgia forests, turn them into pellets, and either ship them to Europe to be burned for electricity OR burn them right here in the South.
North Carolina activist, RiverDave, created a poem about wood pellets. We found the poem really inspiring and wanted to feature it on our blog!
