⁍ It is unclear how much California’s plan for becoming carbon-neutral by 2045 depends on its forests.

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⁍ This year, a record 4 million acres in California have burned, releasing decades of stored carbon into the atmosphere.

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⁍ Between 2001 and 2014, California’s forests and natural lands lost an amount of carbon equivalent to 511 million metric tons of CO2 emissions.

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– “California is kind of ground zero for some of the most extreme climate impacts,” Emily McGlynn, an environmental economist at the University of California, Davis, tells Reuters. McGlynn is referring to California’s wildfires, which this year saw a record 4 million acres burned. That amounts to more than 200 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, assuming the scorched acres held similar amounts of carbon as acres burned in previous years. That is equivalent to nearly half the state’s annual human-caused emissions. And that is just for 2020. Between 2001 and 2014, California’s forests and natural lands lost an amount of carbon equivalent to 511 million metric tons of CO2 emissions, McGlynn said—roughly the same amount emitted by the state’s transportation sector over three years, according to data from the state’s Air Resources Board. Wildfires accounted for three-quarters of that carbon release from forests, while logging and tree pruning as part of forest management made up the rest, state records show. “California is kind of ground zero for some of the most extreme climate impacts,” McGlynn says. Gov. Gavin Newsom this week asked state agencies to craft policies toward storing more carbon on natural lands, calling that “a critical part of the climate change conversation.” The state next year will implement changes to its cap-and-trade program that could boost the market price for carbon credits and spark more private investment in improving forests in California. Companies can currently use forest carbon credits to offset up to 8% of their greenhouse gas emissions. However, conservation projects covered by the program account for only about 1.5% of California’s total annual emissions.