
Many more trees could be planted without encroaching on crop land or urban areas - ciconia
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/04/planting-billions-trees-best-tackle-climate-crisis-scientists-canopy-emissions
======
jillesvangurp
It can actually be better than this still. Cattle can be part of a solution to
helping restore arid land where the soil has been destroyed by intensive
farming and erosion. Healthy soil stores enormous amounts of biomass (aka
carbon). Intensive farming has destroyed enormous amounts of land world-wide
and turned it into desert, releasing lots of CO2 into the atmosphere.

This is a reversible process and catlle is part of the solution:
[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jul/22/cows-
cli...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jul/22/cows-climate-
change)

So, using large herds of cattle to refertilize bits of land that are currently
not usable for agriculture would capture enormous amounts of carbon in the
soil, restore the water retention capability of arid land, put a stop to large
scale erosion of remaining soil, and restore it to productive land that may be
used for growing food. Alternatively, once restored, you can sit back and
watch the land reforest itself or use planned grazing to keep it as grassland.
There's no actual need to manually plant trees; though it does probably speed
up the process.

Finally, using cattle to fix land produces lots of nice organic/free range
meat in a sustainable way as a side effects. And yes, cow farts have a green
house effect but it is offset by the captured CO2 in the restored soil.
Healthy soil has lots of biomass.

~~~
senorjazz
Is this actually validated?

Living in an area heavily deforested for cattle grazing, the cattle grazed
land does not look like a healthy land. The cattle keep all plant life cut
right back. Hot sun can easily access the soil drying it out, then when heavy
rains come, the top soil all runs off the land.

Land that is left without cattle fares better, land that is actively
reforested and trees helped to get established looks infinitely more healthy.

~~~
wlib
I'm on my phone in the country side with slow internet so I cant look up a
link, but if I remember correctly, you should search "Alan Savory TED Talk" on
youtube for an introduction to the use of livestock to reclaim land.
Essentially, the issue with most livestock grazing is that it does not mimic
natural grazing, which is a seasonal, high volume, high density event where
the herd moves on and allows the grazed area time to recover.

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
> Alan Savory TED Talk

I'm no expert, but I would approach this with extreme caution. There are a lot
of replies that he is "misleading", "wrong", "dead wrong" etc.

~~~
jillesvangurp
There are also quite a few projects where this has been shown to get results
in the real world. Enough that it's probably worth trying to replicate the
results. Worst case it fails and you hopefully learn something.

------
akeck
Related: A Toyota engineer grows forests: [https://fellowsblog.ted.com/how-to-
grow-a-forest-really-real...](https://fellowsblog.ted.com/how-to-grow-a-
forest-really-really-fast-d27df202ba09)

~~~
jwr
The cool thing is that you can order your own dense, self-sustaining forest
from [https://www.afforestt.com](https://www.afforestt.com) — and it doesn't
have to be big (100 square meters), and it doesn't take a hundred years,
either.

~~~
krageon
100 square meters is very, very big unless you are almost unthinkably wealthy.
Or at least it is in my neck of the woods.

~~~
kwhitefoot
100 m2 is only a square about 33 feet on a side. Big if you live in a high
rise in a city but you don't need to be unthinkably wealthy in any area that
has woods. The plot of land that my house sits on is 800 m2 and I am most
certainly not wealthy, let alone unthinkably so.

------
lrem
The key phrase of the article:

“Without freeing up the billions of hectares we use to produce meat and milk,
this ambition is not realisable,”

This is the polar opposite of what is happening at the moment. In particular:
[https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/02/americas/amazon-brazil-
bo...](https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/02/americas/amazon-brazil-bolsonaro-
deforestation-scli-intl/index.html)

~~~
tobltobs
Why do you cut of the second part of this sentence?

“Restoring trees at [low] density is not mutually exclusive with grazing. In
fact many studies suggest sheep and cattle do better if there are a few trees
in the field.”

~~~
lrem
Because it is not that relevant, for two reasons:

1\. Most land used to produce meat and milk is actually not by grazing.

2\. I was tunnel-visioned on the part I added. The article calls for
reforesting 1.7G hectares, at average 50% density, for a total of 850M. Amazon
is being deforested at about 500k-1M hectares per year[1] and the political
climate suggests making it worse rather than better. According to a quick
googling, over half of Amazons trees are over 300 years old and the
deforestation is done with fire, effectively instantly undoing 300 years of
sequestration. So, within 3-6 years of business as usual just the Amazon
deforestation balances out a year of this theoretically possible global
effort.

Please prove me wrong, I don't want this to be true :(

Edit: TFA calls for 1.7G (not T) hectares with 1.2T trees.

[1]:[https://news.mongabay.com/2019/05/new-report-examines-
driver...](https://news.mongabay.com/2019/05/new-report-examines-drivers-of-
rising-amazon-deforestation-on-country-by-country-basis/)

~~~
lrem
Separate news touching on this: [https://phys.org/news/2019-07-moist-tropical-
forests-boost-c...](https://phys.org/news/2019-07-moist-tropical-forests-
boost-climate.html)

Note that opportunity claimed here is smaller than the loss from the other
source. In my sparsely informed understanding, it seems slowing down
deforestation should be our priority #1.

------
michaelaiello
You can plant trees at $USD0.10 per tree at trees.org

~~~
raphaelj
That's really interesting.

According to this [1], a 10 years old `Calliandra calothyrsus` such as the
ones they (trees.org) plant captures about 170 kg / 380 lbs of CO2.

According to the World Bank [2], the average European citizen produces 6 tons
of CO2 while the average American produces about 16 tons.

That would mean that they can offset the yearly CO2 emissions of an European
or American person by planting 35 ($3.5) or 95 ($9.5) trees, respectively.
Quite impressive if true.

\--

[1]
[http://www.unm.edu/~jbrink/365/Documents/Calculating_tree_ca...](http://www.unm.edu/~jbrink/365/Documents/Calculating_tree_carbon.pdf)

[2]
[https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?location...](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?locations=US-
EU)

~~~
solstice
That's true but only half the picture: every time one of these trees dies it
is cut down it needs to be buried or otherwise prevented from releasing the
CO2 back into the atmosphere. The tree you mentioned is described on Wikipedia
as follows: "...This tree grows to about 6 m and has pinnate compound leaves
and flowers with a boss of prominent reddish-purple stamens. It is not very
drought-tolerant and the above-ground parts are short-lived but the roots
regularly resprout..." So that's a significant amount of stuff to bury/dispose
of. (The project at trees.org seems very interesting regardless, though.)

~~~
zdragnar
Trees don't completely return to atmospheric co2; leaf litter, fallen branches
and trunks are an important part of lifecycles for many fungi, bacteria and
insects. I goodly amount of said material becomes new topsoil, rather than
simply being respirated back out into the air.

------
CoolGuySteve
I wonder if anyone is researching genetically modified trees that specialize
in carbon sequestration. Sort of like Golden Rice but for climate change.

~~~
HillaryBriss
I wonder that too. Also, how much concrete construction could be replaced with
engineered wood construction so that less concrete was manufactured (thus
reducing a primary source of CO2 output) and more CO2 could be sequestered in
buildings? i.e. can we genetically engineer a tree that grows fast and is well
suited for construction uses?

~~~
Tharkun
There may be no need to genetically engineer trees for construction at this
point, at least not in north america. Some kind of beetle (or was it a
fungus?) has killed off a mind boggling number of trees which can be used as
engineered wood in construction. As CLT and maybe Brettstapel.

~~~
JudgeWapner
> Some kind of beetle (or was it a fungus?) has killed off a mind boggling
> number of trees

which may be a side-effect of fighting forest fires and the campaign against
logging. higher tree density == easier for fungus to spread. this is why I
don't automatically believe anything from the "enlightened" progressive camp.
back in the 80's, it was "Stop the Big Bad Loggers! Save the Forest!". Now,
had they responsibly _thinned_ the forest, used the timber for logging, that
CO2 would be sequestered in homes and the fungus wouldn't have spread through
the forest.

~~~
maxerickson
The huge tree die offs in the US have been from invasive species. A big recent
one is the Emerald Ash Borer.

Lack of evolved resistance and predators are the key factors.

~~~
JudgeWapner
how does firefighting play into that? there was no firefighting before the
20th century. now everytime there's smoke it's squashed immediately. that
cannot be natural.

~~~
Tharkun
Is it, though? There have been fires in the arctic for weeks (month?) which
haven't been put out. I'm sure firefighters try to put out forest fires asap
when they're near human settlements but the world is a big place, and there
presumably aren't enough firemen to put out every forest fire.

Before the 20th century, there were likely fewer campers setting trash on fire
in the middle of a super dry forest. Or maybe not, come to think of it.

------
skosch
Interesting – we need more of such studies.

Check out Drawdown [0] for other interventions with quantified costs/benefits.

Economists widely agree that carbon pricing is the most effective way to fix
climate change [1], and fee-and-dividend implementations are the most viable
politically (there's a bill before Congress now [2]).

[0] [https://www.drawdown.org/](https://www.drawdown.org/)

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/business/economic-
science...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/business/economic-science-
nobel-prize.html)

[2] [https://citizensclimatelobby.org/energy-innovation-and-
carbo...](https://citizensclimatelobby.org/energy-innovation-and-carbon-
dividend-act/)

~~~
notatoad
I believe carbon pricing has two aspects - one is to charge carbon emitters,
the other aspect is to use that money to do something that reduces existing
CO2 levels. Just charging emitters does not completely solve the problem, so
research into the best ways to spend the funds generated by carbon pricing is
critical.

~~~
mariushn
I always thought that carbon/green certificates taxes go towards
environment/renewable energy, but I'm probably too naive...

How to minimize the Tragedy of the commons effect? Where countries don't want
to impact their economic growth because other countries won't impose such
taxes, therefore some production will move there.

~~~
notatoad
>How to minimize the Tragedy of the commons effect? Where countries don't want
to impact their economic growth because other countries won't impose such
taxes, therefore some production will move there.

This was the point of the Paris Agreement.

~~~
lozenge
The Paris agreement did nothing about this. It is completely non binding. The
actual emissions reduction plans (INDCs) were drafted by each country and not
negotiated.

------
acqq
From the article:

“Crowther emphasised that _it remains vital to reverse the current trends of
rising greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and forest
destruction, and bring them down to zero._ He said this is needed to stop the
climate crisis becoming even worse and because the forest restoration
envisaged would take 50-100 years to have its full effect of removing 200bn
tonnes of carbon”

200bn tonnes? Apparently humanity releases at the moment almost 40bn CO2
tonnes per year (1). All that trees then replace only 5 years.

1)
[https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aaf303](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aaf303)

"CO2 emissions grew by 1.6% in 2017 to 36.2 Gt (billion tonnes), and are
expected to grow a further 2.7% in 2018 (range: 1.8%–3.7%) to a record 37.1 ±
2 Gt CO2 (Le Quéré et al 2018b)."

~~~
Flip-per
My interpretation:

Only 42 % of the emitted CO2 stays in the atmosphere[1], the rest is soaked up
by land and ocean. The article only relates to the CO2 in the atmosphere.

[1] [https://www.co2.earth/global-co2-emissions](https://www.co2.earth/global-
co2-emissions)

~~~
acqq
That factor changes "5 years" to 12. Which is still less than that because our
emissions still increase.

I don't suggest that trees aren't important, just that they are definitely
still just a tiny part against what we put in the atmosphere at the moment if
we contiue to do so (and we do too little to change that).

------
gshdg
Where can one donate to an organization that plants trees?

~~~
Maximus9000
There are tree planting orgs like [https://trees.org/](https://trees.org/)

There are also very effective tree saving charities like "cool earth"

[https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/report/cool-
earth/](https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/report/cool-earth/)

~~~
krageon
[https://trees.org](https://trees.org) was mentioned elsewhere as well, but
when I tried to donate they really asked for a prohibitive amount of personal
information. Then they had a "privacy policy" that I had to agree with, which
was also chunky. I prefer donating to an organisation that recognises that
there is no need for a huge amount of my personal data.

------
Flip-per
> The analysis found there are 1.7bn hectares of treeless land on which 1.2tn
> native tree saplings would naturally grow.

> Crowther’s team calculated that there are currently about 3tn trees in the
> world, which is about half the number that existed before

I really hope this study is solid, but how can 1.2tn re-planted trees make up
for a loss of 3tn logged ones? And moreover cover the CO2 of all that burned
coal and oil?

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Because it's not suggesting to return to pre-human numbers, but to plant
without encroaching on current agricultural and urban land.

------
WalterBright
It's about time this was noticed.

Consider that coal comes from dead trees - growing trees will be a big part of
the solution.

~~~
tortarga
Trees that had their leaves stripped by acid rain, flowed into stagnant seas
and the nutrients caused ocean-wide algal blooms.

------
hdivider
Given the right approach, this is also probably the only way to tackle climate
change that is self-sustaining. Because trees _reproduce_. And they constantly
search for ways to adapt to their environment in order to survive and
reproduce.

Human technology can't do that yet.

~~~
wrycoder
And hopefully not soon.

------
nielsbot
A glimmer of hope? Waiting for the other shoe to drop in terms of "it will
cost too much", "politically it's not possible", or some such...

~~~
kibwen
I think part of the appeal of this plan, aside from its theorized
effectiveness, is that it doesn't require any political buy-in. People can
plant trees all on their own.

That said, a trillion is a quantity larger than any human has the ability to
intuitively grasp. It really depends if by "planting trees" they mean
"scattering seeds by aircraft" or if they mean "hand-planting saplings".

~~~
seltzered_
"scattering seeds by aircraft"

FWIW, There are startups doing this idea like BioCarbon Engineering
[https://www.biocarbonengineering.com/services](https://www.biocarbonengineering.com/services)
(found via video by one of it's investors Tom Chi
[https://vimeo.com/294975140](https://vimeo.com/294975140) (at 11 minute mark)
)

The concept of seed drops / seedballs seemingly goes back to the 'zero budget
farming' ideas of Masanobu Fukuoka (an older video that goes into seedball
making -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4-bwW8PWI0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4-bwW8PWI0)
)

------
WalterBright
Finding ways to get trees to grow in inhospitable areas, like the tundra,
deserts, and at high altitude, can also help.

~~~
Panino
As far as deserts go, here is Geoff Lawton using permaculture to grow fruit
and other trees in Wadi Rum, Jordan, a desert that gets just 17mm of rain per
year (less than an inch). They use only permaculture and greywater to achieve
this feat.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycLbO02lb7w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycLbO02lb7w)

If fruit can be grown there, it can be grown almost anywhere on Earth.

------
rawland

            “We still have a net loss of about 10bn trees a year,” Crowther said.
    

This is a horrible number... I wonder what the true loss is, without the
component of planted trees?

~~~
Flip-per
"The Planet Now Has More Trees Than It Did 35 Years Ago" (Nature publication):

[https://psmag.com/environment/the-planet-now-has-more-
trees-...](https://psmag.com/environment/the-planet-now-has-more-trees-than-
it-did-35-years-ago)

------
aitchnyu
What do scientists say about alleged negatives about planting trees, like
reduced reflectivity and slower disperal of fumes in cities? Do any of them
still stand?

------
zamazingo
That means a global / multinational movement against governments cutting trees
(eg for lucrative construction deals) is needed.

~~~
lopmotr
Cutting for wood doesn't hurt since the carbon is still trapped in the wood.
In fact it helps since they regrow new trees that sequester carbon faster in
their early years than mature trees.

~~~
hristov
That is the superficial thinking but unfortunately it is not true. First when
they cut trees, they do not haul in the branches and the leaves. There is no
money in that. The branches and the leaves are all cut out and left in place
with just the main trunk being hauled to the sawmill. The branches and the
leaves then dry out and rot releasing their carbon. This means that big part
of the trees mass (probably at least 50%) does not get its carbon sequestered.
(For a similar reason freshly logged forests are a much bigger fire danger
than forests that have not been logged at all).

Secondly unfortunately, in general loggers mostly do not regrow the areas they
cut down. Although they do talk about regrowing whenever they are talking to
the media, in reality the areas regrown are far less than the areas cut down
and thus the earth is losing a lot of tree cover every year.

~~~
Scoundreller
Dunno what kind of tree it is, but I do see tree plantations where each was
clearly planted at the same time in a grid, and in a race to the sky, the
trees don’t bother with outward branches much, just the ever rising canopy.

------
sunstone
So would deciduous trees better than evergreens for this given that they shed
tons of leaves every year?

------
your-nanny
I wonder about growing trees in regions losing permafrost from GW

~~~
lopmotr
Perhaps there's a natural negative feedback where a higher CO2 concentration
leads to more tree growth which reduces the CO2 concentration.

------
dr_dshiv
What, is it the 1980s again? Save the Rainforest and Plant a Tree? Why did
that plank of the environmental movement get dropped? Did it?

In any case, it is back just in time for the latest season of Stranger Things.
Ooh!

