I kept waiting for how coppicing would fit into modern lumber and energy production, it never showed up in the article. I guess they could use the sticks to produce bamboo like plywood? Maybe chipboard - except that's typically produced from waste products already (I think)?
This is probably the key take-away:
"Coppicing cannot compete in an economic system that fosters the replacement of human labour with machines powered by fossil fuels"
Then the kicker is the last paragraph:
"These numbers confirm that it is not biomass energy that’s unsustainable. If the whole of humanity would live as the 40% that still burns biomass regularly, climate change would not be an issue. What is really unsustainable is a high energy lifestyle. We can obviously not sustain a high-tech industrial society on coppice forests and line plantings alone. But the same is true for any other energy source, including uranium and fossil fuels."
So, we ramp down our energy use by a couple of orders of magnitude.
That's not going to happen.
This is probably the key take-away:
"Coppicing cannot compete in an economic system that fosters the replacement of human labour with machines powered by fossil fuels"
Then the kicker is the last paragraph:
"These numbers confirm that it is not biomass energy that’s unsustainable. If the whole of humanity would live as the 40% that still burns biomass regularly, climate change would not be an issue. What is really unsustainable is a high energy lifestyle. We can obviously not sustain a high-tech industrial society on coppice forests and line plantings alone. But the same is true for any other energy source, including uranium and fossil fuels."
So, we ramp down our energy use by a couple of orders of magnitude.
That's not going to happen.