Climate change is a reality. Today, our world is hotter than it has been in two thousand years. By the end of the century, if current trends continue, the global temperature will likely climb higher than at any time in the past two million years. 

No one knows how much warming is "safe".  What we do know is that climate change is already harming people and ecosystems. Its reality can be seen in melting glaciers, disintegrating polar ice, thawing permafrost, dying coral reefs, rising sea levels, changing ecosystems and fatal heat waves.  A worst case "doomsday" scenario is possible.

As the largest land-based natural storage facility of carbon, the Northern temperate forests play a critical role in mitigating global warming, absorbing about 2 billion tons of carbon annually.  The carbon is primarily stored in the vegetation and frozen soil, known as permafrost.

Corporate logging, extensive resource extraction, such as mining for oil and coal, and roads and large-scale urban environments degrade the forest ecosystem and soils to the extent that the ecosystem can no longer absorb as much carbon, thus releasing it into the atmosphere.

In addition, as global warming worsens and temperatures rise, Boreal Forests become more stressed and susceptible to pests and diseases, and the frozen soil melts - both consequences in turn may cripple temperate forests' ability to absorb carbon dioxide, and thus create a positive feedback loop in favor of global warming.