Inside America's mass timber movement

Mass timber is a type of wood being used to build large buildings, like high-rises and airports. Jeff Glor traveled to Oregon to understand more about the material, its safety, and whether it's sustainable to use long-term.

"CBS Saturday Morning" co-hosts Jeff Glor, Michelle Miller and Dana Jacobson deliver two hours of original reporting and breaking news, as well as profiles of leading figures in culture and the arts. Watch "CBS Saturday Morning" at 7 a.m. ET on CBS and 8 a.m. ET on the CBS News app.

[maxloewe]

You can hear how perfect the acoustics are in that airport because of all wood.

[rrfirefly]

The airport terminal's ceiling is interesting, but it also brings to mind all of the trees that were cut down to produce all those pieces of timber.
Q1: Don't all of those exposed surfaces collect a significant amount of dust? How is that issue resolved? Are those extra surfaces accessible for dusting?
Q2: With the built-in plasticity of this medium, why wasn't there more of an effort to embrace a less rigid design? This could have been more free-form (within reason).

[eezkw]

I'd rather look at a beautiful forest rather than a phkn building.

[jtrcknoregon]

As a concerned Oregonian, the jury is still out. Mass timber may be green washing, maybe not. I'm concerned as I have seen the forest harvest schedule drop from high value timber of 75+ years to 40 years fiber production. Fiber rotation schedules do NOT deli ver a forest, a forest of diverse species supporting each other as both flora and fauna. A non-monoculture forest is alive, interconnected and resembles the beginning of a real forest about 80 years of age here west of the Cascade mountains. Rotations of 140 years was shown by Oregon State U work over thirty years again to produce forests of 2x timber volume with 3x value due to its higher quality. The problem of course was corporate ownership won't wait. Timber harvested from burns for this purpose of mass timber building is a great way to sequester carbon. The BS in Oregon is the industry advertising campaign of, "for every tree we cut, we plant three". Its BS because there is simply no compare of three seedlings vs a mature or old growth tree. Let forests grow old with a thinning, maybe two, a prescribed burn etc. Harvest wildfire burned and/or diseased, bug attacked stands. Move forests back to patient investors and out of corporate money changers' hands.

[jadedrealist]

Of course the timber guy says it isn't green washing. If not done right, which in most cases it isn't, it is green washing. I would have had more respect for him and his company if he was honest.

[euphgolf]

It's super cool how they give zero credit to half of Europe's countries where this type of construction has been dominant for decades. It's beautiful, but "the future"? No, sir.

[reneeparker]

Old growth forests sequester more carbon and this idea does not seem to address the need for allowing more forested land to become old growth. This a greenwashing and it is unsustainable considering our human population is growing. I live in Oregon and I see clearcutting as suicidal.

[Tonyatsd]

Timber producers now mainly harvest non-native monoculture forests in 10 - 20 years. It takes 20 - 30 years for mono-culture forests to become net zero carbon emitting. This creates net carbon emitting plantations that have single height overstories. The understories of monoculture forests are virtual dead zones for understory growth and inhibit soil's ability to absorb massive amounts of carbon. Soils and understories of perma-culture forests (modeled on naturally occurring forest) rapidly become carbon banks because soils and understory growth in natural and perma-culture forests do the bulk of the work absorbing large amounts quickly until trees grow to sufficient size to absorb large amounts of carbon.

[sandbridgekid]

I see the destruction of land for fast growing pine monocultures.

[pawsfurGod]

THIS IS NUTS!!! Gods poor animals. They barely have anything left!😢😢😢😢😢😢

[dorishanoum]

Yeah, if this keeps up -- THERE WILL BE NO MORE FORESTS!!+- JUST LIKE HOW THEY ARE DESTROYING THE AMAZON RAIN FOREST THE SAME DAMM WAY!!!-- ITS A BUNCH OF B.S.-- This makes me SICK!!😤😱👎

[theeclecticlifewithsam]

Awesome, real journalism! Very mixed feelings though about propping up an industry with a sketchy environmental track record. Old growth forests will surely be affected, despite the reassurances of industry insiders. A boom in this sector will absolutely lead to more deforestation in developing countries. In a time when we need to keep as many trees as possible intact while planting even more, this feels counter intuitive to fighting climate change and preserving wilderness.

[DaBinChe]

Those clearcut sites are not forest, they are farms. Tree farms. This is a great way to capture carbon. Currently we are growing more trees than cutting down.

[skiptheroad]

Mass timber construction is not new in the U.S., I've seen it used in northern Michigan in the 70's for gymnasiums. NMU has the Superior Dome, their football stadium.

[MattnUska]

5:04 I’m not saying the timber industry is perfect however before humans were around to cut trees many forests in the west would burn down every 20 years. That’s how nature does clear cutting. When you cut a tree down to build something permanent it locks up that carbon. If you let it burn it just all goes back in the atmosphere. We need properly managed forests.

[kieshaj]

I'm reading the comments and I understand what everybody is saying and it's nice and beautiful and cool and everything but is anybody thinking about where the animals are going these are animals homes and they just taken the Holmes how would you feel if somebody kicked you out of your home??? Does anybody think about where these animals go once they start tearing down their homes?
They're going into neighborhoods.... They're finding their way you take their home you take their food they're going to find something to eat😮😮😮

[sandbridgekid]

It looks like a waste of wood and forestry resources. Extravagant waste of wood and dangerous fire hazard.

[MrCODMASTER]

There is no mention of rot or decay over time. Isn't this bound to happen?

[trekuhl]

Compression forces in a 25 story wood frame high rise have to be enormous, I’m curious how that is handled? They’re looking at several inches of vertical compression of the wood structure.

[marinusvanderlubbe]

No it’s not sustainable, its just a ceiling in an airport- one that will be remodeled and removed