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So a company that plants trees could earn money under this system?

• strommen 8y ago
  A company that converts clear-cut land to forest could earn money. There is an entire sector of the economy dedicated to voluntary carbon offsets, and re-forestation efforts are the primary supply. People and companies use these as a sort of carbon tax to offset the emissions they cause by taking airline flights, hosting events, or just living their daily lives.
• tengbretson 8y ago
  Trees are not a form of permanent sequestration.
  • mchannon 8y ago
    Trees are a step that can either lead to permanent sequestration, or can lead to open-cycle sequestration, both of which are better than nothing. The carbon in a tree can get pulled out of the equation for decades while it grows, and partly slow-released as it rots on the forest floor, and partly adapted into the soil, some of which will eventually become a sequestered fossil fuel deposit. Alternatively, part of the tree can become food, or lumber, or paper, and whatever those eventually decay into may be, at least in part, things other than methane and CO2, safe in the ground as permanent sequestration. Trees aren't a panacea, but they're a tool we dare not discount out of hand.
  • adrianN 8y ago
    You can cut them down, turn them into charcoal and bury the coal. It is then sequestered for at least a few hundred years, likely much longer.