Smith said mature forests are needed to help handle carbon that is already in the atmosphere.

“We shouldn’t be thinking of them as a way of allowing us to emit more,” she said. “We have to scale down emissions while ramping up protection of forests.”

She said mature forests also help cool the planet, and their roots absorb vast amounts of water that can help minimize damage from flooding, such as the southeast experienced recently with Hurricane Florence. The southeast of the U.S. is the world’s largest wood producing region, Smith said.

“We are talking about protecting forests in the Amazon, but not in our own back yard,” Smith said. The logging industry is getting a free pass on climate change, she said, while we are destroying our forests at four times the rate and scale of logging in South America.

The statement was signed by 40 mayors; organizations such as Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Sierra Club; and leading climate scientists and advocates, according to Dogwood.

The group also released a report — “Seeing the Forest: Nature’s Solution to Climate Change” — saying industrial logging is a major source of carbon emissions in the US.