SEATTLE — In Seattle’s Seward Park, President Joe Biden on Friday signed an executive order to inventory mature and old-growth trees, reflecting a high-profile and intensifying global focus on the role that forests can play in combating climate change. The order states that American forests absorb more than 10% of annual U.S. economywide greenhouse-gas emissions. It calls conserving old-growth and mature forests on federal lands “critical to protecting these and other ecosystem services provided by these forests.” The order called out climate change and catastrophic wildfires — not logging — a…
