Why Timber, Why Now?

Notes from "Designing the Forest and Other Mass Timber Futures"

In April, the Trump administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued a directive to increase domestic timber production; and just last week, the administration announce tariffs on timber imports. At first, I was surprisingly hopeful. US forests need to remain valuable. Forests that provide valuable timber remain forests, whether they are replanted actively or passively; but forests with no value are turned into farms. In other words, without regular harvesting and a strong timber market, true deforestation is to be expected.

A century ago, in 1923, the first patent for glued softwood — the precursor to today’s mass timber — was filed in Tacoma, Washington. At the time, the idea was radical: avoid cutting down old growth timber and turn small diameter wood into something stronger than itself, something standardized, and scalable. This effort eventually became plywood. And today, that same principle could help us transform the future of cities as mass timber has the potential to replace concrete and steel in urban buildings.

For most of modern history, we’ve relied on concrete and steel — durable, mineral-based materials. To make them, we pulverize ancient geological formations (we mine), we cook their components at immense heat requiring immense energy, and emit more greenhouse gases in the process than all the world’s cars combined. These are “dead” materials: easy to shape, store, and use, but impossible to regenerate.

Wood is different. It grows. It decomposes. It responds to seasons, weather, and catastrophe. It has a metabolism. It cultivates social ties through roots, mycorrhizal networks, even the forest’s shifting canopy. Unlike lime and ore, trees can reproduce indefinitely.

Mass timber takes these qualities and makes them fit for urban density. Instead of lumber relegated to suburban houses, timber panels and beams can now replace some of the most polluting building systems in cities. But this promise comes with questions: Can forests keep pace with urban growth? Who guarantees replanting? Does timber construction deplete the forest? How do we avoid incentivizing monocultures, or the over-simplification of landscapes into production machines?

I thought that this policy would incentivize distributed selective harvests that keep the forest healthy and fire-resistant through thinning. But this action was more focused on a reduction of safeguards, primarily, simplifying permitting for logging (and clearing) on federal lands. This means that areas could be cleared without review, risking the loss of soil nutrient build up that takes centuries and rewinding the clock on established mountainside forests that more valuable for providing ecosystem services like cleaning our air and water than for their timber.

Although clearing forests and allowing regrowth is still better than converting the land to agriculture (true de-forestation), these policies show the stakes: government is starting to bet on domestic timber, which is critical, but whether the bet pays off in the long run depends on whether we culturally see ourselves as stewards of the forest or consumers of the forest. Will trees be actively replanted? Will the harvests be selective or large cleared areas? Will there be a strong enough timber market to protect cleared areas from becoming farms?

Mass timber is not automatically non-extractive, but it can be a huge win for the environment if we get it right. For the next few weeks, I’ll be publishing excerpts from my book Designing the Forest and Other Mass Timber Futures. We’ll explore the hidden economics of material extraction, who benefits from a timber boom, what kind of culture is required for a forest to thrive, and why we deserve plant-based cities 100 years from now. I hope you’ll stay tuned.