Want to plant trees to offset fossil fuels? You’d need all of North and Central America, study finds

The cultivation of trees has a lot of benefits, but the way to remove a common carbon alone cannot coincide with emissions aimed at the planet resulting from the largest fossil fuel companies in the world. To do this, the trees will have to cover the entire Earth’s mass in North and Central America, according to a study outside Thursday.

Many respected climate scientists and institutions say that the removal of carbon emissions – not just reducing them – is necessary to address climate change. The trees simply remove carbon by “breathing”. But breaking the numbers, the researchers found that the ability of collective trees to remove carbon through optical representation cannot stand in front of potential emissions from fossil fuel reserves for the largest 200 oil companies, gas and coal fuel – there is not enough of the land available on the ground to accomplish this.

Even if there is, if these 200 companies have to pay for the cultivation of all these trees, this will cost $ 10.8 trillion, that is, more than the joint market rating of $ 7.01 trillion. The researchers also decided that companies will be in red if they are responsible for the social costs of carbon in their reserves, which scientists calculate about $ 185 per metric tons of carbon dioxide.

Nina Frigans, a research colleague at the University of Exter, who participated in the composition of the published paper in “Evers & Environment”, a research colleague at the University of Exter, who participated in the composition of the published paper in “Evers & Environment”, a research colleague at the University of Exeter who participated in the composition of the paper published in “Evers & Environment”, a research colleague at the University She participated in the composition of the paper published in the Nature’s Magazine: “Perhaps the general public understands that the audience understands the opposition to be a kind of magic eraser, and this is not the place we are in.”

Carbon compensation mainly means investing in tree cultivation or other environmental projects to try to compensate for carbon emissions. Trees are one of the cheapest ways to do this because they absorb the carbon that aims to the planet naturally. In addition to companies and other institutions, fossil fuel companies have strengthened to provide trees as a major part of carbon displacement programs in recent years.

For example, Totalenergies, a global energy company, said in a statement that it “is invested extensively in carbon capture and storage projects (CCS) and naturally based solution projects (NBS).”

To carry out their accounts, researchers in the 200 largest fossil fuel reserves – fuel that are the companies with shareholders that they can extract in the future – and calculate the amount of what will be released by carbon dioxide if this fuel is burned. The researchers also focused on planting trees only because the expenses and technological development needed for other forms of carbon capture are often expensive.

Forest expert Ilian Oligoro, who did not participate in the research, described the study as “elegant”.

“It gives people a sense of proportionality about carbon,” said Opeligoro, CEO of CIFOR-AARRAF, an international forest research center.

But she warned against simplifying the equation by looking only to capture carbon, noting that the cultivation of the tree that was done properly can enhance food security, biological diversity and protect societies from natural disasters.

Daphne Yin, director of land policy at Carbon180, called on her team to support the American policy to remove the ground -based carbon, that the paper indicates that it is financially impossible to compensate for enough carbon to compensate for the burning of future fossil fuels. She said that the idea that companies will ever ask for the river -running emissions account from fossil fuels that they extract is “imagination”.

Freights said that the idea of ​​planting trees is attractive to the public and politicians because it is tangible – people can literally see that carbon is integrated into the branches and leaves when a tree grows. But she says that no other ways should be overlooked – the underground microbes store carbon also, but cannot be seen.

Jonathan Foley, executive director of the project project, who was not part of the study, said it is an inevitable material and athletic fact, partially clear through this study, that there is no around it – we have to stop carbon emission. He says: Before starting cleaning, you should turn off the water.

“The trees are the sponge and the mop we use to clean the chaos,” he said. “But if the taps are still working and flowing water on the edges of your bathtub, which destroys your bathroom and your home, you may also learn to stop the taps as well.”

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