THE CARBON ACCOUNTING RECKONING - UPDATED
REVISION 4.0 | Includes AFOLU (ECCC) Response, dated July 2, 2026
Quick question worth sitting with: can a carbon sink (a forest, an ocean, or a lake) turn into a carbon source?
Most of the comments we've had on this article series over the last two months assume forests and oceans just keep absorbing carbon, year after year, no matter what. This paper went through a formal technical review from Environment and Climate Change Canada's land-use accounting team, and the corrections from that review are already built in. What you're reading has been checked by the government scientists who track this exact data.
In 2023 and 2024, the world's oceans and forests both absorbed noticeably less carbon than usual, at the exact same time global emissions hit a record high. The eastern Amazon, one of the most carbon-dense forests on the planet, has already made that flip. It is now a documented net source of carbon dioxide rather than a sink (Gatti et al., 2021, Nature).
That is the problem this paper takes on: mainstream carbon accounting still assumes natural sinks stay stable or even improve, even as forest loss hits levels never recorded before and the oceans, which absorb roughly a quarter of everything we emit, grow measurably more acidic in the process, a change that reduces their own ability to keep absorbing carbon. Canada's 2023 wildfire season alone burned more than double the previous record, and global emissions hit an all-time high the following year. The observed trend runs the other way, and it changes what every emissions target actually means.
Independent research, unfunded, no commercial sponsorship. Read the document below, then comment what you think.
Read here or click below.
John Profitt, B.Sc., P.Eng., GSC, LEED AP®, Principal, Nextlevel Modular Inc.
LinkedIn | Vancouver, BC, Canada
Prepared with AI assistance. Technical content, professional judgments, theories and premises are those of the author.
About the Author
John Profitt, B.Sc., P.Eng., GSC, LEED AP® is Principal of Nextlevel Modular Inc., a BC-licensed residential builder and USGBC member company operating from a repurposed shipping container and timber frame home in Vinsulla, British Columbia, Canada. He holds individual membership in the Canada Green Building Council and is registered as a Professional Engineer with Engineers and Geoscientists of British Columbia. He brings nearly four decades of construction and geological engineering experience across North and South America, including field work with Indigenous communities across Canada and Mexico.
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