Environmentalism, California Style
Roguepundit has an article about a law, which is actually a voluntary program, in California, encouraging forest land owners to not cut trees. Based on the Climate Action Registry, it monitors carbon dioxide storage levels in forests. There is no real incentive for landowners to do this, except that they might be ahead of the game if and when Cali makes the program manditory.
The problem with this, like so many other environmental regulations in California, is that it's not really based on great science.
This concept is the same one that was brought up in the Kyoto agreement during the 90s. Companies and nations get points for the amount of trees they have (simplified version). But it doesn't really work that way, as Roguepundit points out also, as younger trees absorb more carbon dioxide than older trees, and in developed countries like ours, most of the wood goes into manufacturing, which releases less CO2, than in developing countries where the wood is burned for fuel, which releases most of the CO2.
California already has the toughest environmental regulations in the world regarding timber harvesting. Most of it is tedious, and much of it is not based on hard science. Urban enviros continually push this nonsense on the rural land owners. Their faith in the "science" behind this is almost religious.
Sorry, off my soap box now.