Planting trees can help save the planet, right? A new study finds that to offset all the planet-warming carbon emissions from fossil fuel reserves, trees would have to entirely cover an area the size of North and Central America combined.

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.

  • Gordon Calhoun@lemmy.world
    23·
    22 hours ago

    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.

    • FaceDeer@fedia.io
      14·
      21 hours ago

      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.