Welcome to the interlinked presentation of the Northern Sierra Project for investments in the forests of the Northern Sierra and associated transportation and energy infrastructure, as elements of the response to the climate-change crisis.
The project includes the prototype Beckwourth Solution program, which addresses the immediate crisis in the health of forests communities of the upper watersheds of California and beyond. The Solution is a specific set of activities in a mountain region from about Nevada City in the Southwest to Susanville in the Northeast, with significant involvement of the transportation facilities in Oroville and Marysville. It builds a partnership with the bottom-of-watershed community of Richmond, building value structures to support the people of that city for the critical hydrocarbon processing services the site is uniquely suited to deliver. The Solution is named to honor and carry forward the work of the great African-American, member of the Crow people, explorer and innovator, Jim Beckwourth.
The Solution introduces the FREE/GWesCo structure. The Foundation for a Renewing Environment and Education (FREE) is asset-ownership and public-benefit governance organization, which expresses forest-health, education, and other public benefits. FREE holds a controlling interest in the prototype's structured-ownership infrastructure (shared services) company, the Golden Western Company(GWesCo), including affiliates such as the Golden Western Forests Company (GWF). The commercial design is built around the recognition, growth and optimization of the portolio of carbon-sequestration and emissions avoidance services of forests (Forests Carbon Services, FCS) as part of larger infrastructure systems for the climate-change-response political economy.
Greenhouse gas efficiency is critical in the response. The Beckwourth Solution captures economies of scale through integration .of high-value forest biomass with lower-value renewable feedstocks in very high capacity hydrocarbon processing facilities at Richmond.
Logistics are key to all biomass programs, and are key to the integration of the Northern Sierra Project into the larger climate-change response. The Beckwourth Solution includes barge transportation between a rail-served river port at Marysville and the hydrocarbon facilities at Richmond, with additional benefits through expansion of the infrastructure for agricultural waste and fuels in the climate-change economy. This project has much to offer to the emerging policies of the Biden administration. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttegeig is a potential Federal-government sponsor of the Project and Solution.
The FREE-Richmond element of the Solution directly addresses the environmental-justice concerns associated with the fossil hydrocarbon industries which the program replaces. The FREE structure supports other programs of economic justice through its use of structured-ownership structures in high-value rent-generating businesses of efficient responses to the climate change crisis.
The solution is extensible, reproducible, and scalable. The best outcomes for the Northern Sierra Project support and are supported by harmonized work in the Sacramento and Klamath, and Willamette watersheds. What works in Loyalton works in Weed; Klamath Falls, Roseburg, and Coos Bay are among the nearer co-benefitting forests communities. The FREE/GWF structure is applicable as well in combinations including the forests, waterways, and industrial centers of the North American,Great Lakes region, of the watersheds of the Mississippi, Amazon and Salween.
In our community of the Plumas Sierra of the Northern Sierra, we have the foundation for solutions to the complex of challenges and opportunities facing the forests communities in the climate crisis. Progress on these projects demands substantial participation from the many partners, downstream, urban and wealthy as well as high-altitude, rural, and impoverished, in our work for healthy forests communities. All human communities share in the riches of the forests. All human communities are, for health, forests communities.
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