Dr. Eugene Hendrick:

The question of whether we should keep the forests and not harvest them in terms of climate change mitigation has been comprehensively addressed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In its fifth report, which it issued a number of years ago, the panel concluded conclusively that the best mitigation we can get from forests is threefold - material substitution, sequestration and the use of bio-energy. This has been endorsed by quite a number of scientists in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The best way to mitigate climate change is by managing the forests sustainably, increasing forest cover, reducing the amount of deforestation and using wood products to substitute for energy-intensive materials. This has been endorsed and agreed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.