It’s foolish to consider such marginal issues for woodland in countries like Ireland. Between modern agriculture and human settlement there is an extremely limi

It’s foolish to consider such marginal issues for woodland in countries like Ireland. Between modern agriculture and human settlement there is an extremely limited amount of space to maintain ecosystems, and the last thing you want to do is apply the same logic of high intensity agriculture to growing carbon over huge swathes of land. I would not take a 25% greater carbon impact and certainly not a 25% lower maintenance cost if the consequence is creating a green desert for wildlife. This is one reason why we need to act now on the climate, the Paris deal only achieves its relatively gradual 2050 targets by assuming enormous carbon sequestration from the 2040’s onwards, which unless there is a breakthrough will require us to cover an absurdly large amount of land in these kind of dead plantations. To halt the current mass extinction we’ll need to keep climate change within reasonable bounds, but also set aside enough land for ecosystems to be able to support themselves. The earlier we act, the less collateral damage we’ll be forced into to keep temperatures below reasonable levels. A few sensible policies on zero carbon heating or transportation now can mean the space to create national parks rather than massive dead plantations in 15 years.