Green Daily

As if chopping down forests for toilet paper didn't have a major feel-bad vibe to it already, Greenpeace has just released a report saying that the practice could lead to massive amounts of carbon being released into the atmosphere, with a dramatic effect on global climate.

According to the report, titled Turning Up the Heat, current logging practices in Canada's boreal (subarctic) areas are unsustainable and dangerous. Because forests store huge amounts of carbon, clear-cutting is "exacerbating global warming by releasing greenhouse gases and reducing carbon storage."

Logging also leads to melting permafrost, and makes remaining vegetation more vulnerable to destruction by other climate change related mechanisms like insects and wildfire, in turn releasing still more greenhouse gases. It's this vicious cycle that Greenpeace calls a potential "carbon bomb", because it could potentially spew more greenhouse gases than all the coal-fired power plants in China, and then some.

How big could the impact be? Well, the Canadian boreal forest is estimated to contain about 187 billion tonnes of carbon, about 27years worth of global fossil fuel emissions. While it's unlikely to all be released at once, even over a period of years it could bump up global warming to a whole new level of unpleasantness.