 Wangari Mathai, the Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, and we were looking around and we were thinking about forests because of course one of the reasons that Professor Mathai won the Nobel Peace Prize was for planting trees and recognizing desertification, loss of forests and the effect that that had on communities and health and the climate and water. So we were speaking with somebody who had helped fund that film and we were talking about ecosystem services and corridors for animals to migrate north as climate change gets worse and they asked us have you heard about the biomass industry and neither of us had heard about the biomass industry I'm ashamed to say because we thought that we were relatively well informed on environmental issues and so we started looking into it and we were stunned and we thought well here we are we're stunned so you know we got this is what this film has to be about and we can include you know ecosystem services and other aspects of what we were going to include in the film we thought we might make so that's how it began just realizing that there was very little knowledge out there about this industry and what the detrimental sides of it were which are pretty much all of them so that's how it began and then Chris has worked with us previously on other films and he was he jumped in it was April 2015 I think and he's been just incredible did a lot of research traveled with us went to the UK with us to look at Drax and he's been steady and really wonderful in the outreach aspect of it and making small modules which we've made that you can use in social media all on our website thank you there was a as another framing piece for people because I'm not sure it was clear the film was made between 2015 and 2017 was finished so it's been three years that we've been taking to festivals for you know I don't know that was three or four months at the beginning and then into this outreach phase where we've done screenings really all over the world there've been about 150 screenings in those three years in the United States primarily in the southeast the northeast and then in Hawaii also where they used it to actually shut down plans for our power plant on one of the islands and then internationally about 50% of them a lot of them focused in the UK around Drax but also in other countries like Nova Scotia they did a they really used the film as a great organizing tool to to stop cutting and what they call there the crown forests which are the forests that are basically owned by the government the state you know the the the forests of the people there and one other important framing thing is and this was had to do with sort of our knowledge of pellets and biomass you know when we came to the project we you know I personally thought of biomass as being what we put in a residential in our in our stoves in our pellet stoves at home there's a lot of wood burning that goes on in New England and in Vermont to heat homes but that's not you know just have to make it clear that's not what the film is about and we need to remember that people very easily slide into thinking about oh are all pellets bad are they all the same and this is really about industrial scale electricity generation and you know we'll get into that I think in the discussion about you know the difference between heating and electricity generation in terms of efficiency and the power plant that doesn't get mentioned in the film that's in Vermont which is McNeil and Burlington which is considered to be renewable and kind of blindly accepted as being okay and part of their sort of their great energy situation in Burlington. So can you tell us what's happened since the film was released in 2017? The subsidies in the UK have gone up to 136 billion pounds a year. I don't think that has been changed in this version of the film yet we have changed it we are in the process of updating the statistics and many of the pellet plants that are in the southeast have increased their output and there are many more plants in the southeast and there are ones under construction and Drax owns two major plants in Alabama or is it Mississippi or maybe both places. Anything else Chris updates? Well yeah you're covering the negatives which is the industry growth I would have to say you know watching the NGOs who are campaigning against biomass in this country and around the world I would say there's been a growth in them as well and in media coverage which just comes from sort of relentless kind of work by activists on the ground and with that there have been some victories which maybe Rachel could even talk about you know on the change regulations in the UK around CO2 footprint and what's allowed now divestment kind of campaigning so Rachel do you feel about that? Yeah I mean in the UK there is definitely a growing awareness of the problem especially among people and less so among policymakers but the renewed renewable energy directive in the UK did step back some from the prior version as far as biomass but not nearly enough but I just would add to say that this issue is not just limited to the pellet trade that's going on between the southeastern United States and British Columbia which is the second largest source of pellets to Europe. There are many other huge power plants across Europe because Europe had taken on commitments to reduce their emissions and this was a big part of how they were going to do that but it's now become much more global we have a really fast growing trade of wood pellets going into Asia and particularly Japan after Fukushima and into Korea as well and that's really taking off just today we had a conference call with some activists in British Columbia because that's where a lot of the Asian pellet exports are going coming from so this has really expanded globally a lot since you know since the film was made in spite of the fact that this has been a very useful organizing tool it has still been growing globally because you know when the rubber hits the road politicians need to do something about climate change and this is one of the sort of low hanging fruit for them in terms of just being able to say that that they're addressing emissions in some way they can convert coal plants without as Duncan said in the film without much infrastructure change trees grow everywhere they can be harvested 24-7 and burned 24-7 so it is a problem that has grown globally and very rapidly very rapidly and I think we need to be really prepared to address it in a much more unified and powerful way than we've been able to do so far. I want to add one thing I think that part of the reason that it's growing is because it is labeled renewable and that is one of the things that needs to be removed from the biomass industry definition of you know what they do it's not renewable on any timescale that means anything for this planet. I would just add that you know one of the reasons I was excited to to be involved with Standing Trees Vermont was to be fighting for the protection of forests and instead of against bioenergy because we've worked really hard to fight back against this bio biomass juggernaut and the thought was that if we could at least get some forests off limits to logging and protect it against that industries make it unable them unable to access these forests that would be worth doing so that's coming at it from another angle. So another question what does Standing Trees Vermont hope to accomplish? We passed that one to Mark. Yeah I was going to ask if you want me to take that one. I think we want to accomplish several things. We want to first educate people and raise awareness about what's happening in the Green Mountain National Forest and in some of our state forests. The fact that logging is increasing the logging plans are increasing. If you see the picture behind me this is from a section of the Green Mountain National Forest it's in the northern part of the greens it's in the Rochester area and this is part of one of their timber sales. So we want to raise awareness because a lot of Vermonters are not aware of what's happening in our public lands and we're focused on we want to be clear we're focused on public lands that we and that is our federal and our state lands not private lands and we're not focused on anything other than trying to put these lands off limits to logging let them rewild let them grow old let them do the best they can for ourselves and for our environment. So we want to raise public awareness. We want to talk to legislators and talk to forest managers both for the national forest and for the state forest to talk to them about making policy changes making management decision changes to to start looking at how to manage our public lands differently. So and then we are looking at would we like to take on some some sort of direct actions to see what we could do to try to stop these these logging plans and these logging actions that are taking place. So that's what we want to accomplish ultimately we'd like to see our public lands the forest on our public lands off limits to logging. Thank you Mark we're getting a lot of really good questions. There are a number that have a similar theme. Can you contrast large-scale biomass burning with home heating by wood and rural Vermont? I'll be happy to at least start to address that. I think it's a it's a you know a very nuanced it requires a much more nuanced approach because we do need to heat somehow or other. We need to start out by figuring out how we can do that most efficiently but our choices are that we have available right now are somewhat limited and you know there are situations and places where heating with wood may make sense and places where it may not. I don't think it's appropriate to just have a blanket everyone should heat with wood instead of gas or one of the other options nor is it appropriate to have a blanket never never heat with wood. It's a much more complicated landscape trying to assess that and that's you know I think what we need to keep our focus on right now is these very large-scale pellet trades and those are real clear no-go territory. It is totally polluting inefficient not renewable energy. There's no question about that when it comes to residential heating or even commercial and other other kinds of heating that's a much more complicated discussion and I would leave it at that. And Rachel to piggyback off of what you're saying I didn't mean to give wood heat a free pass when I sort of was framing what the film was about and like you said it is more nuanced but as us in a kind of a scale issue I was looking back in research and I had a Vermont 2016 comprehensive energy plan and just to give people a sense of the difference between one power plant that McNeil in Burlington 50 watt power plant. 50 megawatt yes it can light one light bulb that's a 50 watt power plant and of all the biomass used in the state they used in 2016 they used 90 percent of it. So all of the other uses of pellets and chips for biomass that would include schools, businesses, state office buildings, colleges, residences that was 10 percent of the biomass so you can you get a sense of the scale that of the amount of wood that's required to as fuel stock for electricity generation it just blows everything else out of the water. Yeah I will add to that that you know EPA recently set new standards for emissions from wood stoves and I upgraded my wood stove in my own home because I do heat with wood somewhat and I was amazed at how much more efficient and how much cleaner that was so there's a lot of things that even burning wood for residential heating that can be done to improve how that's done because there's no question if everybody in the world decides to heat with wood we'd have a lot of air pollution and a lot of problems for supply but the commercial and industrial scale is a clear target we need to address. So here's another question I've heard the word proforestation what does that mean? Take that yeah go ahead yeah give me just a second I was I was pretty sure that question would come up so Bill Mubow who was in the film was the one he and some others did a literature review a lot of really good previous research that was done around carbon sequestration how to effectively manage our forests etc and they came up with this term proforestation and what it is is growing existing trees intact to their ecological potential largely free from human intervention except primarily for trails and hazard removal so basically other than for trails and for getting rid of hazards it's letting the forests grow naturally this as opposed to terms like aforestation or reforestation which can take years a lot of money and there may not be enough available land to to achieve what we need to do as far as co2 capture proforestation is cheap let our forests grow let them continue to do what they they do naturally our forests in northeast have not recovered they are recovering they've got many more years to go before they return to their former glory so the idea behind back to what the standing trees are not want to accomplish we want to see our forests on our public lands be allowed to grow and and and be natural and not be managed the forest service and our state forest management they want to actively manage these lands and they come up with a lot of terms about why it's good to manage the forest as opposed to letting them grow naturally and that gets to part of our education that we want to let people know that that our forests are better off if we leave them alone they capture more carbon they provide more ecological benefits and biodiversity as opposed to if we try to put some man-made management on top of them so I hope that answers the question so could you talk a little bit more about what the forest service is planning to do the amount of clear cutting that is in the works and what people can do about it yeah thanks Annette that's a good question and so to give you an idea of what's happening in the Green Mountain National Forest there are four forest projects that have been approved the Early Successional Habitat Creation Project the Robinson Integrated Resource Project the Somerset Integrated Resource Project and the South of Route 9 Integrated Resource Project they all sound like they're good things Early Successional Habitat Creation Integrated Resource Projects they all have very nice names to them you add them up and it's over 40,000 acres of logging within the Green Mountain National Forest 40,000 acres may not sound like a lot from western views 40,000 acres is 10 percent of the Green Mountain National Forest within these plans the Forest Service uses different terms for the type of cutting they're going to do they do in their plans have identified certain areas for absolute clear cuts and that's somewhere between 600 and 700 acres but some of it is still evolving because one of the projects they haven't yet identified all the types of clearing they're going to do but they use other terms like Early Successional Habitat Creation or what you see behind me this is not called a clear cut but if you look at this I don't see many trees standing they pretty much went through and just cut down every tree in sight so when you when they're the names that they use aside of that 40,000 acres a good majority of it is going to be clear cut type projects so another question how can I help let the Forest Service know that I don't support what they are doing I'll take that one too and we're going to talk about this when we wrap up at the end because and I'll repeat myself at the end too but you know many times when when you attend events like this you wonder what the heck can I do this is this is very interesting I learned a lot but what can I do there's a couple things one is we're starting a campaign for people to send letters to the supervisor of the Green Mountain National Forest and let them know that they're not happy with the management plan for the Green Mountain National Forest and I'll talk more in detail about this at the end but in case people drop off if you go to our website we've got a link in there under the I think it's the get involved tab where we have information on how to write a letter to the supervisor of the Green Mountain National Forest addresses of where to send that letter people that you should copy with your letter and and ideas thoughts to help you write your letter the Forest Service doesn't do a really good job of making the public aware of their plans they announced their plans through things like a small ad in the Rutland Herald okay and they meet with people that they engage with on a regular basis whether it's recreational clubs whether it's the logging industry but they don't do a very good job of reaching out to the public to let them know what they're planning we want the Forest Service the supervisor to hear from the public that people are not happy with with what's being planned in there in your letter you can request that they that they give you a response to your letter in writing so that's one thing the other thing on our website is it's under the contact us a tab or the take action tab again i'm sorry i don't have it up in front of me but you'll see it on our website which is in the which is in the chat box right now you also can send us a message of if you'd like to get engaged do you have any special skills or talents or something you'd like to do to work with us as we as we try to fight for protecting our public lands so we're getting a lot of questions about politics senator lehi have we met with senator sanders in burlington where is ed markey on this what about the subsidies so who would like to address the political problem well i can start and probably others can help with that too and there are other people in the um in in our audience here who can also contribute to that i can say that you know i mean bernie sanders was actually responsible for the mcneil when he was governor here for the mcneil power plant um in burlington and i've tried many times to talk to him about it i think uh by now he kind of understands that it's not the greatest thing and maybe has some regrets about it but um doesn't really want to it doesn't not too eager to talk about it um and um we are currently uh contemplating how we might reach out to patrick lehi because in particular around the green mountain national forest area because he has some particular relationship to some of the areas that are that are slated for logging so that's something that we've been thinking about how to do um i will say i was you know a couple days ago on a call with a bunch of people from the many different NGOs and organizations that have been working on this issue talking about how to engage with the current new administration on this issue the epa um went through a process uh some years ago of um considering how to deal with the emissions from biomass the so-called biogenic versus fossil fuel uh co2 question and there uh they had a scientific advisory board that went through spent like three years um studying the issue and concluded that um that it was a problematic and has never really taken action on that meanwhile there's been a lot of uh and so there's some hope that maybe the new epa might actually do what this scientific advisory body had advised years ago and there'll be some pressure to do that um we also talked about the fact that we have not ever had a champion in congress at the federal level of any sort on this issue um other than maybe uh um senator markey at one point was something of a champion but it's been very difficult to get any traction on this and part of that is because it is defined as renewable energy um people who support you know uh understand that climate is a problem to support uh policies for renewable energy they feel that it would be divisive to try to split off the biomass from the solar and energy and wind that we need to have a united front politically in order to get anywhere uh in in in the political sphere uh so that's been the problem that we've been up against with that as as part of a response to the questions about what to do politically um you know approaching let's just add another perspective for folks uh approaching people at the top you know in a top down kind of way is one way to do it so you know people in NGOs that are trying to push an agenda uh it's that's an important tool as important is uh the bottom up approach so all the folks you know the 200 folks that were on this call which is about half the population of vermont I think um you know writing writing letters uh to the editor uh calling your uh calling politicians and and uh other bureaucrats in the state of vermont that's as effective and I think both of those tools are important so you know getting involved in that kind of way and um learning more about the issue by visiting the various websites you know you can visit our the film's website burnthemovie.com we have resources biofuel watch has resources on their website and a bunch of other groups that were represented in the film dogwood alliance n r dc um other environmental law center yeah so um you know educate yourself and um get involved in that way I just encourage you to do that and be in touch with any of the groups uh that I've just named with questions about what what you can do without the subsidies this industry would not exist so that's a really um really something to go after but of course all energy companies get subsidies you know the oil you know the oil industry gets subsidies but um this one would go be gone without subsidies and that's actually happened in the state of new hampshire um or I live in new hampshire by the way just over the border from braddleboro um and uh our uh republican governor for various reasons uh vetoed subsidies to six smaller biomass plants that were in the state of new hampshire meanwhile the big one that's in the film of the burgess plant which is a 75 megawatt plant uh up in berlin north of the white mountains is still being subsidized but the other six the subsidies were cut out and they closed down and a similar thing happened in Maine so um that really is what's propping up the industry okay I would um I'm seeing the time it's 8 15 and um so I just want to ask the panel is this the best time now mark for you to give the wrap-up of uh other actionable items of what people can do sure and um there's been some I want to just quickly because we are being very sensitive time then some good questions and comments in the chat about our position on logging and wood products etc um we're not saying that we're against logging and we're not making any negative statements against wood products what we're saying and what we're working toward is to protect the forests on our public lands um the amount of forests that are protected from resource extraction is very small in the US and in the northeast so we're not saying to take forests out of production we're just saying that there's a place to protect our public lands and allow them to provide the most benefit they can to us by allowing them to grow there are many many um and part of our education is to point out that there unfortunately is some incorrect information out there that cutting forests is good for them um wood products do store carbon but the process of cutting the forests transporting the logs manufacturing etc releases carbon and the amount of carbon that's actually captured and stored long term is very very small related to if we left the forest alone so we just want people to understand that there's a place for protecting forests on our public lands and we want to make people aware of some of the incorrect information that's put out there about why we should cut our forests because cutting our forest is not good for our forests it's good for industries but not good for our forests it's not good for the plants and animals that depend on them and it's not good for providing us with clean water and protecting us against extreme weather events which are going to happen over time so I'll just drop it at that I would like to say thanks for all the questions that were in the chat and I think it was very good and gave an opportunity for sharing sharing a lot of information so um you know a lot of what I was going to say has already been said I hope everybody found the film and the q and a session educational as I said when I go to a lot of events like this I always at the end walk away thinking what can I do so I'll repeat what you can do if you visit our website which we've put in the chat box several times but if you just google standing trees vermont it's standing trees vermont.org um you go to our website and you'll find in there an opportunity to learn how to write letters to the supervisor of the green mountain national forest and let them know what you think about their logging plans and what you think about their management plans and also there's an opportunity that you can send us a message and let us know how you'd like to get involved or if you'd just like to be on a list for future communications we're a brand new group we're all volunteers we come from a lot of different diverse backgrounds but we have a common common goal here and that is we want to protect our forests on our public lands we haven't put together yet our communication strategy we do want to figure that out and if you give us your name and you'd like to be on that list we will we will communicate with you in the future as we work on that it's under the get involved tab on our website I'm sorry I was struggling to remember where it was after this event tonight we are going to send out one email and only one email to everybody who registered for the event and that email is going to contain information about what I just talked about the letter writing campaign it'll provide you links to our website and our facebook page and as I said at our website under the get involved tab you can get information about letter writing or you can send a message to us so I want to thank everybody for joining us tonight you can watch our website and our facebook page for announcement about future events I'd like to say take care everybody stay healthy and get out and enjoy the forests that are near you hey mark could we have a last word absolutely you have four last words I just saw in the chat someone asking about links to the film and so at burn the movie calm just the website on the homepage is a link to the 30 minute version that is free for anybody to watch at any time the film is also we have a 45 minute version that's really tailored to the Europeans and the UK situation and the original film is actually a feature length uh 74 minute film and you can find out how to watch those versions on the website what did I forget lisa um just you did mention that there is a resource tab on our website that has for example the article that mark was referring to by bill mum on susan misino and edward facing and a lot of other articles that and we continually add new new information there and also I think I said this before there are 21 modules about biomass that can be used for social media they're all like a minute minute and a half or something like that but there's a lot of a lot of good information there and we are actually going to be putting all versions of the film for free on youtube as fast as we can so thanks for watching yeah thank you may I ask a question but there's so many great questions in the chat will they be saved or I've saved them all and I guess we'll figure out what to do with them okay okay good I've made a point of saving them all because I agree they're really good questions yeah thank you so much Annette that's good because we can't obviously get to them all but there's some great I have a list of 51 well there's 99 plus new messages I've got here so maybe they're not all questions they're not all questions thank you who all you people out there for thank you attending tonight thank you thanks everybody thanks to the panelists thanks to everybody who attended tonight it's very inspiring to see so many people here thank you thank you for helping us help each other great job