Planting trees has plenty of benefits, but this popular carbon-removal method alone can’t possibly counteract the planet-warming emissions caused by the world’s largest fossil-fuel companies. To do that, trees would have to cover the entire land mass of North and Central America, according to a study out Thursday.

Many respected climate scientists and institutions say removing carbon emissions — not just reducing them — is essential to tackling climate change. And trees remove carbon simply by “breathing.”

But crunching the numbers, researchers found that the trees’ collective ability to remove carbon through photosynthesis can’t stand up to the potential emissions from the fossil fuel reserves of the 200 largest oil, gas and coal fuel companies — there’s not enough available land on Earth to feasibly accomplish that.

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[–] 19 points 1 year ago (1 child)

If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging!

By all means, feel free to figure out about filling it back in second, but that's doomed to failure if you skip step 1.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago (1 child)
  • It's almost like we only really had one option this entire time!

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  • What if we plant a tree on the freshly-dug grave of every billionaire?

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago

    Better get started, then.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    Good. hardest part of a solution is figuring out what we need. , now let's go drop apple tree seeds everywhere.

    Not kidding. Couldn't hurt

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    So you're sayin' there's a chance?!

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Frankly I'm surprised it's so little. I thought it wouldn't be possible with Earth's landmass period with trees alone.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Too bad global warming is rapidly worsening forest fires. Pretty sure these kinds of solutions are already DOA, even if they were being taken seriously. The runaway effects have begun to snowball.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Can't they use Russia instead?

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    As an European, that works for me.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    There's enough room to plant them in the huge deserts, like the Gobi desert, Sahara, etc.

    The upside is you get to stabilize the ground. The downside is you need to supply water directly to the root to be viable

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago* (11 children)

    And even if you did do that, where would you store the wood afterwards? You can't let it decay, that'd just put the carbon back into the atmosphere.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (7 children)
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (6 children)

    You think trees don't die and fall down on their own?

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (5 children)
  • [–] -3 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    And the rest of them just stay frozen upright forever, I suppose.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    As long as new trees start at a higher rate than the old ones fall down...

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  • [–] -2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    That would require an ever-increasing amount of forested land. A carbon pyramid scheme. As soon as you stop increasing the forest's area it goes back to an equilibrium of trees decaying equalling trees growing.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    Another problem with storing carbon as cellulose is it uses up all the available water. So the trees would need to be cut down and turned into charcoal to release the H's and O's, and then buried.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    The world isn't short of water. I'd be more concerned about phosphorus and other such mineral nutrients, those would get pulled out of the soil and then not returned.

    Frankly, I think the best approach to sequestration is to make plastic and bury it. Plastic has a much more controllable chemical structure, you can be sure to only get carbon that way.

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