Publisher's Note

According to the task force, US environmental and energy policies need to be linked to or at least based on the mutual recognition of four basic and science-informed premises: * sustainably managed forests can provide carbon storage and substitution benefits while delivering a range of environmental and social benefits, such as timber and biomass resources, clean water, wildlife habitat, and recreation; * energy produced from forest biomass returns to the atmosphere carbon that plants absorbed in the relatively recent past; it essentially results in no net release of carbon as long as overall forest inventories are stable or increasing (as is the case with US forests); * forest products used in place of energy-intensive materials, such as metals, concrete, and plastic (a) reduce carbon emissions (because forest products require less fossil fuel-based energy to produce); (b) store carbon (for a length of time based on products' use and disposal); and (c) provide biomass residuals (i.e., waste wood) that can be substituted for fossil fuels to produce energy; and * fossil fuel-produced energy releases carbon into the atmosphere that has resided in the earth for millions of years; forest biomass- based energy uses far less of the carbon stored in the earth, thereby reducing the flow of fossil fuel-based carbon emissions to the atmosphere.