Are Climate Claims for Burning Renewable Trees a Smokescreen?

This article (series) in The Tyee brings up, and actually slightly confounds, two important questions.

One is the issue of carbon “credits” in advance of the sequestration that they are purported to buy. This points up what to me has always been the second and fatal flaw in the whole carbon credit business which is the fact that it virtually begs for abuse. (The first but perhaps not quite fatal flaw being the idea of giving away free initial emission permits to current heavy industrial emitters)

The other question is about long term sustainability independent of the economic pricing and incentives issue, namely just is it possible to generate combustible biomass at the same rate it is consumed? Or is this just the beginning of a process of burning up every scrap of tissue on the planet just as the pre-coal use of wood as a fuel led to the destruction of forests all over the world and in some places like Easter Island has probably already been a cause of civilizational collapse.

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