Ever planted a tree to feel better about your environmental footprint? It’s a good idea, but it might not have as much of an effect as you’d hope. A simulation-based study has determined that it would be utterly unrealistic to plant enough trees to offset humanity’s CO2 emissions as they are — the plantations would need to be so big that they’d “eliminate most natural ecosystems” or cut into food production. Even under the reductions from the Paris Climate Agreement, you’d still have to replace natural ecosystems on an area more than a third the size of the world’s forests. The most viable option involving trees would require both “ambitious” emissions reductions and improvements to both nurturing the plants as well as capturing their CO2.
This doesn’t mean humanity is doomed, provided the predictive model is reasonably accurate in the first place. However, it does reinforce the idea that lowering emissions involves more than a single solution like planting greenery. Any real answer to human-made climate change is going to involve a complex set of answers.
For the researchers, this involves both reducing fossil fuel consumption and implementing multiple techniques for removing CO2. You could make more efficient use of available land by eliminating food waste, as an example. Reforestation is still wise, to be clear, but it’s just one piece in a larger puzzle that can include everything from smarter farming to solar power.
Via: Reddit
Source: Potsdam Institute, AGU Publications
