It would be nearly impossible to plant enough trees to compensate for the climate impact of burning through the world’s fossil fuel reserves. Offsetting the estimated 182 billion tonnes of carbon held in the reserves of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies would require covering more land with trees than the entirety of North and Central America.
“There simply isn’t enough land available for the level of afforestation that would be needed to offset fossil fuel-related emissions,”
Also it takes decades for trees to start capturing a significant amount
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Planting trees is really fun. I love it.
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I must have planted about 10,000 trees within the last twelve years I’ve been living here in the PNW.
I also helped remove hella trash from streams and rivers.
It sounded super tedious when I first signed up to volunteer, but it ended up being like most fun shit I have ever done with my free time.
They let me access areas that are closed to visitors, I’ve helped with necropsies of dead whales and other wildlife, I’ve seen baby foxes playing without them realizing I was watching them, I’ve seen the most beautiful flowers and insects.
Fucking turnt on this shit. I wish I could do it full time, so I’m trying to find a job doing that.
I don’t even care what it pays, it makes me happy.
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I’ve been saying this for years. Honestly, the whole carbon offsetting thing is very similar to the men will do anything but go to therapy meme. We are willing to just about anything other than CUT EMISSIONS.
Further what’s planted is often a monoculture, and does not restore the ecosystem lost.
I think it’s brought up a lot in terms of undoing the damage. Even if we cut emissions to zero today, that doesn’t fix all the carbon that’s already been put out over the last 100-150 years. We need both reduced emissions to prevent damage and carbon capture to undo preexisting damage.
I agree, but a lot of the sequestration options out there suck. By all means replant, but do it wisely. Geological storage has been shown to be way less efficient than desired.
There is some promise in C sequestration in tailings, because it’s permanently bound, but it’s situational.
Offsetting the estimated 182 billion tonnes of carbon held in the reserves of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies would require covering more land with trees than the entirety of North and Central America.
I am on board with this. We can live Ewok-style. I can’t solve for the farming problem though.
Actually, we would be fine if we just stopped eating as much meat. I don’t remember the exact amount, but getting our protein from animals requires many times the acreage compared to getting our protein from plants.
