Victory in Mississippi against Drax, the world’s second-largest pellet manufacturer

Protests against the production of wood pellets are growing worldwide. The production and burning of pellets is responsible for deforestation, extreme air pollution and countless diseases worldwide. This includes the company Drax, the world’s largest importer of wood pellets and the second-largest pellet manufacturer, which has violated environmental regulations over 11,378 times since 2014. This is now coming to an end – at least in Gloster, Mississippi. Under pressure from the organisation ‘Greater Greener Gloster’, the permit to expand the pellet production plant has now been denied. A victory from Mississippi via Alabama to Georgia and North Carolina.

In Switzerland, wood heating systems are subsidised even though they are the most harmful of all heating systems for health, climate and environment.

Forest and energy policy continue to heat up the climate – although heat is considered the greatest risk for health 

As climate change progresses rapidly in Switzerland, heat has a particularly devastating effect on the population. It is the most fatal climate hazard and must be urgently combated by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This is the conclusion of a new report by the Federal Office for the Environment (link)

However, the current forest and energy policy continues to heat up the climate. 

Wood heating systems and wood-fired power plants are promoted and subsidised, even though wood is worldwide no longer classified as sustainable and renewable and although the burning of wood emits more CO2 and pollutants than fossil fuels.

Wood-fuelled district heating plants require immense amounts of wood, which necessitates large-scale clear-cutting, which in turn promotes drought, slope instability and heat.

Blatten / Lötschental: Are the statements by Federal Councillor and Environment Minister Rösti true?

Federal Councillor and Minister of Environment Albert Rösti assures the population at the site of the disaster that this is a “1 in a 1’000 years event” 

But: in 2017, a rockslide destroyed the village of Bondo in the canton of Graubünden. In 2023, a huge landslide in Brienz / canton of Graubünden stopped just at the borders of the village.

For scientists, it is clear that climate change must have played a role alongside many other factors.

But Federal Councillor and Minister of Environment Rösti is heating up the climate even more with his current forest and climate policy. He promotes wood heating systems and wood-fuelled district heating even though burning wood emits more CO2 and pollutants than fossil fuels and has been proven to damage forests.

And the unscientific ‘climate-friendly forest conversion’ also increases heat and drought.

You can find out more about the Birch Glacier here

Failure of the Birch Glacier buries Swiss village – official denial continues

The Village of Blatten in the canton of Valais was hit by a massive rock and ice fall yesterday (28 May). Blatten’s 300 inhabitants had been evacuated following observations that the Birch glacier was unstable, but one person is missing and 90% of the village is buried under an estimated 3 million cubic metres of debris which is also blocking the Lonza River, turning it into a lake that threatens the remaining buildings and downriver communities, two of which have been evacuated.

Tremors from the collapse measuring 3.1 on the Richter scale were felt across Switzerland in what experts at the federal institute for technology ETH Zurich have described as one of the largest mass movements ever recorded.

Blatten’s Mayor said “the unimaginable has happened”. 

Except such events aren’t that unimaginable. 

A similar rockfall occurred in 2017 in the canton of Grisons, killing 8 hikers and destroying the village of Bondo, home to 65 people. The tragedy was the biggest landslide in over a century. In 2023, Brienz, also in the Grisons, was evacuated ahead of a huge landslide that stopped just short of the village. The inhabitants were evacuated again last year because of a further threat. 

Our Minister for the Environment headed for the disaster scene where he professed sympathy with the inhabitants and told them, with a straight face, that he had not expected such an event.

It was, he assured the assembled onlookers and press, a “1 in a 1,000 year event.”

He may have to revise his figures. Switzerland has more glaciers than any other European country and is warming at twice the global average. In 2023, Swiss glaciers lost 4% of their total volume, following a loss of 6% the previous year. And the permafrost is melting too which is problematic because it acts like a glue holding the mountains together.

While multiple factors are involved in triggering such events, the country’s scientists have warned that climate change has very likely played a role.

But officials have a habit of downplaying climate change and coverage in the press is tepid, unlike Switzerland’s warming mountains.

In 2024, Switzerland became the world’s first country to be reprimanded by the powerful European Court of Human Rights for failing “to comply with its duties under the Convention concerning climate change” and for violating the right to respect for private and family life. The case was brought by a group of older Swiss women known as the Climate Grannies, who couldn’t get their complaint heard in Switzerland. The Swiss Government shrugged off the ruling and the Climate Grannies were denigrated in parliament. 

While local authorities acted quickly and decisively ahead of this week’s tragedy and their actions saved many lives, more landslides can be expected. And in the very near future too.

Whatever our Minister may say.

Addendum: the SRF drone footage shows a white sheep scattering as the debris cloud envelops it. Livestock were apparently evacuated from the area, but one wonders how many others were injured or killed. 

The Valais delights in blaming wolves for livestock depredation and is exterminating entire packs for killing just one sheep. Yet wolves are responsible for just 2% of total sheep deaths in Switzerland, with extreme weather events, disease, accidents and neglect killing the rest. 

If this sheep met its demise at the fangs of wolves, the story would be all over the papers. 

It is all too easy for inconvenient truths to be overshadowed by official denial and investigative apathy.

Wood smoke is toxic – whether it comes from wildfires or fireplaces

Wildfire smoke is some 10 times more toxic than air polluted from burning fossil fuels

The Paul Scherrer Institute PSI concludes that not only the quantity of particulate matter puts our health at risk, but the type of pollution source plays a major role as well. Burning wood produces the most harmful particulate matter.

So why should people be advised to close their windows and stay at home during wildfires, while heating with wood is promoted and subsidized?

Read more about the dangers and prevention of wildfires here

Woodsmoke is toxic regardless of whether it comes from wildfires or fireplaces

Wildfire smoke is some 10 times more toxic than air polluted from burning fossil fuels and contains harmful fine particulate matter, volatile organic compounds, benzene and heavy metals, to name but a few.

Fine particles are particularly dangerous as they penetrate the lungs, enter the bloodstream and are carried deep within the human body where they cause damage to the cardiovascular and nervous systems. And not just. Exposure to wildfire smoke also significantly increases the risks of dementia, asthma and stillbirths, among others.

Cue the latest argument in the biomass industry’s panoply of excuses for logging natural forests: wildfire prevention. Removing the excessive undergrowth and deadwood found in forests will mitigate and even prevent wildfires, it is claimed.

The logic is hard to fault: No wood – No fire.

But as is so often the case, human logic does not match natural complexity or the growing scientific evidence that logging and thinning to mitigate wildfires doesn’t actually work—with the exception of fire breaks surrounding infrastructures—and can even backfire (if you’ll excuse the pun).

Studies from around the world have found little evidence that increased logging to reduce “fuel loads” reduces wildfire risks. Industrial logging leaves flammable stumps and slash as well as dry soils and plummeting moisture levels. Clearcutting established, native forests and replacing them with highly combustible pine and eucalyptus monocultures is even more problematic, as Chile is finding out to its cost.

But even simple thinning can exacerbate wildfire risks through changes in microclimate and increased air movement which facilitate the spread of fire.

Governments are nevertheless increasingly handing over the management of forest ecosystems along with subsidies to so-called Hybrid Cooperative Schemes to extract wood from forests…

… to then sell as bioenergy!

Somehow, toxic wildfire smoke is rendered harmless when trees are processed and the resulting woody biomass is burnt in human furnaces and fireplaces.

That is alchemy, not science.

It is also greenwashing: There is no evidence whatsoever that increasing the domestic use of woody biomass for energy reduces wildfires. On the contrary, data from Portugal which promotes and subsidises biomass plants based on this very rationale, show that burnt areas continue to grow, both nationally and around biomass/pellet plants which source wood locally.

Immaculate combustion is a myth.

We must stop burning wood and transition to a combustion-free future, for the sake of our health and that of our forests.

June 2025

Summer: campfires, charcoal barbecues, fire bowls – children smoke thousands of cigarettes

Many parents and children look forward to the barbecue and campfire season in summer. But this tradition has fatal consequences. We now know that wood smoke is thirty times more carcinogenic than cigarette smoke. Burning 1 kilogramme of wood emits the same amount of carcinogenic benzo(a)pyrene as lighting 27,333 cigarettes. And you don’t even have to light a fire yourself. If you smell wood smoke of a neighbour’s charcoal barbecue or fire bowl, you automatically become a passive smoker. This means that children are also exposed to extremely harmful pollutants all year round: In winter from wood heating systems, in summer from wood barbecues, fire bowls and campfires.

Wood heating systems massively harmful to health – 53 health organizations raise the alarm

Burning wood emits similar harmful substances as tobacco – only in much larger quantities. This is why 53 British health organizations are calling for a ban on wood heating systems in an open letter to the Minister for Housing and Planning. 

Wood heating systems present an extremely high risk to health. Even if they are only used as a secondary heating source, they cause countless diseases, including dementia, cancer and cardiovascular diseases. 

For example, people using a wood-burning heating system have a 70% higher risk of developing lung cancer. Even if you only use your wood-burning stove once a week, the risk of breast cancer increases significantly

Studies show that harmful fine dust particles are not only found indoors, but also in neighbors’ homes and in the air outside. This means that even people without a wood-fired heating system are unintentionally exposed to a significantly increased risk of serious illness.

Cantons and Municipalities may disturb breeding birds – private individuals are fined with imprisonment

Anyone who renovates his home during the breeding season must comply with strict legal regulations to avoid disturbing birds while they are breeding. Anyone who does not comply with these rules can expect a heavy fine or a prison sentence of up to one year.

Although the law clearly provides for the protection of birds in the forest during the breeding season, the canton of Bern and the Burgergemeinden clear the forest during this time with harvesters weighing several tonnes and do not even stop at protected areas, such as here in the Suldtal (see photo)

Although the Sempach Ornithological Institute is particularly concerned about protecting birds during the breeding season when renovating houses, it does not intervene even when clear-cutting 10 hectares of forest during the breeding season.

Asthma Australia and Lung League Tasmania call for ban on wood heating systems

After the Asthma & Lung League of Wales called for a ban on wood-burning heating systems, Australia and Tasmania are now following their example.

“Every new wood-burning stove can put the health of local residents at risk. In addition to the 1 in 9 people with asthma in Australia, pregnant women, aged people, infants and young children are more likely to be affected by health problems caused by their neighbors’ wood smoke. The pollutants in wood smoke also contribute to diseases such as heart disease and dementia,” says Asthma Australia

More and more health organizations around the world are calling for a ban on heating with wood because the health risk from the pollutants from burning wood is at least as high as that from passive smoking.

Burning wood also emits more pollutants and CO2 than fossil fuels, according to the German Federal Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection.