Coincidentally, given my later career, a prized early childhood possession was a sliver of prehistoric timber with termite holes in it. OK, so I was a fossil geek; there wasn’t much else to do growing up in 1960s East Anglia. Imagine yourself as a kid on a seaside trip to the Wash, where the sea at low tide recedes miles over the horizon. In the pre-Nintendo era, you’d probably have ended up occupying the long hours like me; knocking bits off rocks and imagining woolly mammoths roaming the plains that are now the North Sea.
Anyhow, what this interest instilled in me from an early age is that things that fail to adapt to climate change pay the ultimate price: extinction. And, today, of course, that not only applies to fauna and flora, but businesses too.
If any industry is actually presented with opportunities to thrive by climate change, it’s timber. Planting more, so that forests absorb more CO2, is part of the solution for limiting global warming to a level where it doesn’t actually threaten our existence. Using more not only locks in that carbon, but reduces the need to use other materials that are either based on fossil fuels or guzzle them in manufacture and churn out the CO2 in the first place.
Timber frame housing is also in pole position to capitalise, in fact it already is, with suppliers billing it as low energy to build, energy efficient to run and, of course, high in embodied CO2.
But climate change is bringing challenges for wood too. It’s widely expected to alter the distribution and populations of tree species, compelling the sector to become more versatile in the timber it sells and uses. Encouragingly, according to a hardwood trader quoted in this week’s market report, specifiers are becoming more flexible in the wood they’ll accept, but they’ll have to be persuaded and educated to be far more so in the future.
Global warming is also thought to be behind the spread and proliferation of tree and timber threatening pests and diseases. Following sudden oak death, which in the UK is badly affecting larch, another bug, this time hitting yew, has now crossed the Atlantic. Europe is also on guard against the emerald ash borer which has infested over 5,000 square miles of North American forest. What all this spells for the timber and forestry industry is ever greater investment in the means to deter and eliminate these bugs and bacteria.
Another potential threat is posed by the descendants of my prehistoric pest pets, termites. These have survived from fossil times by migrating to where the climate suits them. Now they’re headed north again as our winters (except the last couple!) become milder. The good news here is that the timber treatment sector is on the case, not only with the insect-proofing products, but also lobbying for Building Regulations to stipulate greater timber protection.
At a slight tangent to this theme, the spread and increased use of timber-based building, which is part driven by climate change, is also being accompanied by growing pains; namely the recent higher incidence of fires on part-completed timber construction sites. But the industry is adapting to this too, with a programme to improve site practice and health and safety procedures and the use of tailored fire retardant treatments.
As for the chances of this esteemed magazine surviving rather than becoming a fossil in a fast-changing business environment, well that looks pretty secure too. Judging by the photo of nine-month-old Oliver Thomas on page 5, we’re evolving a whole new readership that will see us well into the future.
