No MegaGlobalCorp will make billionaires in doing so, but it is perhaps the most effective and achievable intervention in the near term to take carbon out of the air–Plant a trillion trees, per this AP piece by Seth Borenstein:
“… there’s enough room, Swiss scientists say. Even with existing cities and farmland, there’s enough space for new trees to cover 3.5 million square miles (9 million square kilometers), they reported in Thursday’s journal Science. That area is roughly the size of the United States.
The study calculated that over the decades, those new trees could suck up nearly 830 billion tons (750 billion metric tons) of heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. That’s about as much carbon pollution as humans have spewed in the past 25 years.
“This is by far – by thousands of times – the cheapest climate change solution” and the most effective, said study co-author Thomas Crowther, a climate change ecologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.
Six nations with the most room for new trees are Russia, the United States, Canada, Australia, Brazil and China.
The image is from the upcoming presentation on Climate Chaos for SustainFloyd’s Third Annual EnergyFest. Time is 10 a.m. and place is Chantilly Farm on Franklin Pike. Jane Cundiff and I will look at the global and the local of this “slow emergency.”
For my part, I look back a half century to the first Earth Day and my engagement with the planet as a “biology watcher”; then we look ahead a half century to 2070, when our grandchildren’s children will be making their way in what world we leave them. The real and metaphorical trees we plant NOW will determine much about the quality of life they have THEN.
