Planting billions of trees across the world is by far the biggest and cheapest way to tackle the climate crisis
a worldwide planting programme could remove two-thirds of all the emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere by human activities ....... there are 1.7bn hectares of treeless land on which 1.2tn native tree saplings would naturally grow. That area is about 11% of all land and equivalent to the size of the US and China combined...... specifically excluded all fields used to grow crops and urban areas from their analysis ....... “This new quantitative evaluation shows [forest] restoration isn’t just one of our climate change solutions, it is overwhelmingly the top one” ...... the forest restoration envisaged would take 50-100 years to have its full effect of removing 200bn tonnes of carbon...... tree planting is “a climate change solution that doesn’t require President Trump to immediately start believing in climate change ....... “It is available now, it is the cheapest one possible and every one of us can get involved.” ...... “Finally we have an authoritative assessment of how much land we can and should cover with trees without impinging on food production or living areas. This is hugely important blueprint for governments and private sector.” ........ “The most effective projects are doing restoration for 30 US cents a tree. That means we could restore the 1tn trees for $300bn ....... by far the cheapest solution that has ever been proposed ...... $300bn would be within reach of a coalition of billionaire philanthropists and the public....... you get by far your biggest bang for your buck in the tropics [where canopy cover is 100% ......... The world’s six biggest nations, Russia, Canada, China, the US, Brazil and Australia, contain half the potential restoration sites. ........ The research is based on the measurement of the tree cover by hundreds of people in 80,000 high-resolution satellite images from Google Earth. Artificial intelligence computing then combined this data with 10 key soil, topography and climate factors to create a global map of where trees could grow....... many studies suggest sheep and cattle do better if there are a few trees in the field........ there are currently about 3tn trees in the world, which is about half the number that existed before the rise of human civilisation. “We still have a net loss of about 10bn trees a year
Planting a Trillion Trees May Be the Best Way to Fight Climate Change, Study Says Even with existing cities and farmland, there’s enough space for new trees to cover 3.5 million square miles (9 million square kilometers) .... That area is roughly the size of the United States...... 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. Much of that benefit will come quickly because trees remove more carbon from the air when they are younger ....... “This is by far — by thousands of times — the cheapest climate change solution” and the most effective ........ Six nations with the most room for new trees are Russia, the United States, Canada, Australia, Brazil and China. ....... “None of this works without emissions cuts”
You should take a lead on this and do something, Marc. Perhaps create a non-profit, get billionaires to donate. A Charity Water for tree planting worldwide. https://t.co/g0k6QyIjk4
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) August 28, 2019
