4 ms·

Kids can plant trees

ajuc 5y ago
Planting trees isn't the problem. Trees can plant themselves pretty well already, just leave them space that you won't cut and plow every year. My late grandpa had a small plot of land where he grew tomatoes and other vegetables. Since he died 12 years ago nobody does anything to that land cause he lived far from the rest of the family. It's a small forest now. Not cutting trees for new farming land and leaving the space is the problematic part. And more kids is kinda at odds with this. BTW what you're actually doing by planting a tree is burning carbon to move an already existing plant from one place to another.
- Firadeoclus 5y ago
  > BTW what you're actually doing by planting a tree is burning carbon to move an already existing plant from one place to another. That is true (unless you're actually planting seeds), but generally the idea is that another tree will grow where you took it from, so the end result is more trees.
  - ajuc 5y ago
    Yeah but if there are any trees in the region where you plant - a tree would grow in that spot anyway if you just leave it be :) BTW one of the weirdest examples of "patriarchy" is the preference of city planners to plant only male trees (because they generate less "junk"). Which reduces the amount of new trees growing in and near cities significantly.
    - Robotbeat 5y ago
      That’s not necessarily true. Some places have been ravaged by desertification and so actively planting trees can facilitate a forest where otherwise there wouldn’t be any. Second, you can choose trees which are particularly good at sequestering carbon for long periods. Humans are already animals that act as “ecosystem engineers” (like beavers or trees). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosystem_engineer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosystem_engineer We just haven’t historically been very good at it (ie we’ve often historically reduced ecological diversity instead of facilitating it). I think we can do much better, and there are many examples of humans who HAVE done a great job at it (for instance, the man who planted a forest on an island in India). https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HkZDSqyE1do https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HkZDSqyE1do Do you think the planet would be better off if everything else was the same but his parents had decided not to have him? So this is why I think we can’t apply a broad average of human footprint to whether someone should decide to have kids or not. Instilling values, such as being a net-positive to the environment and the value of choosing to live a net-carbon-negative life (and support continued climate action), can be more important than just the marginal impact of not having kids at all. Also, negative-sum thinking ends up in a pretty dark place pretty fast if brought to its logical conclusion. And it seems pretty obvious what the long term result would be if all climate-conscious people had no kids but folks who don’t give a crap about climate action raise lots of children.
    - Firadeoclus 5y ago
      Very interesting! I never knew that a fair number of city trees are dioecious. What happens to all the female saplings? I would imagine that we can actually do a lot to accelerate the process of trees spreading over an area. And even a small speed-up compounds over time.
      - ajuc 5y ago
        Apparently they even cultivate species that aren't dioecious naturally to become so :) https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/16/how-urban-planners-preference-for-male-trees-has-made-your-hay-fever-worse https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/16/how-urba... And of course some species are cloned because it faster and cheaper, so then female saplings aren't a problem. You clone what has higher demand. > I would imagine that we can actually do a lot to accelerate the process of trees spreading over an area. Yes I was a little facetious. I don't actually plan to persuade people not to have kids or not to do gardening. But when I see people gathering millions of dollars to use drones to plant trees I can't help but think it's focusing on the wrong (but cool) part of the problem.
  - monkeycantype 5y ago
    Hello Ajuc and Firad, I don’t literally mean plant trees, what I mean is that unlike fruit-jet-miles, the carbon cost of people isn’t n * constant, people can make choices and take actions including actions that are carbon negative.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  Only the leaves (and maybe other green and exposed parts) of a tree do photosynthesis. The rest of the tree provides structure and protection and nutrients and most of the carbon is sequestered in the structure and roots, not in the photosynthetic part. Human civilization, as it becomes more reliant on solar power, essentially becomes photosynthetic. Already, sustainable harvesting of trees to make long-lived structures can sequester more carbon than a tree does as it decomposes on the forest floor at the end of its life (emitted CO2 and a bunch of methane, which is worse). But we can also do “photosynthesis” more directly by using photovoltaics to produce hydrocarbons from direct captured CO2 and water. In fact, going back to the space meme, this is already done on the International Space Station as a side effect of the life support system. Water is split into oxygen (for the crew) and hydrogen. The hydrogen was originally just vented to space along with CO2 (expelled by the crew) captured from the cabin air, but they realized they could combine the hydrogen with the CO2 and recover the oxygen in the form of water, with the hydrocarbon methane as the byproduct. The methane is vented to space normally, but then they realized they could use the methane and reform it into polyethylene and hydrogen (which can be recycled to capture more oxygen form CO2). The polyethylene could be used in the 3D printers on the space station to produce structures. (NASA hasn’t accomplished this methane to polyethylene goal, yet, although methane-to-polyethylene/polypropylene is done on Earth via methane to methanol, then methanol to olefins). This is, essentially, a synthetic kind of photosynthesis. NASA funded SBIR grants to try to demonstrate this process. And there’s no reason you can’t make any kind of hydrocarbon this way from water and CO2 (hydrogen and CO—which can be made from CO2, as Perseverance demonstrated—are synthesis gases which can be used via the Fischer-Tropsch process to produce any hydrocarbon). In this way, as the mass of a photovoltaic-centric human civilization (buildings and infrastructure and machines) in the form of carbon fiber and wood and resins grows, it is sequestering carbon in its own structure, just like a tree does. So humans (with their houses and buildings, etc) can, in fact, become carbon negative as we transition to clean energy including for utilizing synthesized (or natural) hydrocarbons (or sustainably harvested wood) for structural materials.

ajuc 5y ago

Planting trees isn't the problem. Trees can plant themselves pretty well already, just leave them space that you won't cut and plow every year. My late grandpa had a small plot of land where he grew tomatoes and other vegetables. Since he died 12 years ago nobody does anything to that land cause he lived far from the rest of the family. It's a small forest now. Not cutting trees for new farming land and leaving the space is the problematic part. And more kids is kinda at odds with this. BTW what you're actually doing by planting a tree is burning carbon to move an already existing plant from one place to another.

Firadeoclus 5y ago
> BTW what you're actually doing by planting a tree is burning carbon to move an already existing plant from one place to another. That is true (unless you're actually planting seeds), but generally the idea is that another tree will grow where you took it from, so the end result is more trees.
- ajuc 5y ago
  Yeah but if there are any trees in the region where you plant - a tree would grow in that spot anyway if you just leave it be :) BTW one of the weirdest examples of "patriarchy" is the preference of city planners to plant only male trees (because they generate less "junk"). Which reduces the amount of new trees growing in and near cities significantly.
  - Robotbeat 5y ago
    That’s not necessarily true. Some places have been ravaged by desertification and so actively planting trees can facilitate a forest where otherwise there wouldn’t be any. Second, you can choose trees which are particularly good at sequestering carbon for long periods. Humans are already animals that act as “ecosystem engineers” (like beavers or trees). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosystem_engineer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosystem_engineer We just haven’t historically been very good at it (ie we’ve often historically reduced ecological diversity instead of facilitating it). I think we can do much better, and there are many examples of humans who HAVE done a great job at it (for instance, the man who planted a forest on an island in India). https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HkZDSqyE1do https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HkZDSqyE1do Do you think the planet would be better off if everything else was the same but his parents had decided not to have him? So this is why I think we can’t apply a broad average of human footprint to whether someone should decide to have kids or not. Instilling values, such as being a net-positive to the environment and the value of choosing to live a net-carbon-negative life (and support continued climate action), can be more important than just the marginal impact of not having kids at all. Also, negative-sum thinking ends up in a pretty dark place pretty fast if brought to its logical conclusion. And it seems pretty obvious what the long term result would be if all climate-conscious people had no kids but folks who don’t give a crap about climate action raise lots of children.
  - Firadeoclus 5y ago
    Very interesting! I never knew that a fair number of city trees are dioecious. What happens to all the female saplings? I would imagine that we can actually do a lot to accelerate the process of trees spreading over an area. And even a small speed-up compounds over time.
    - ajuc 5y ago
      Apparently they even cultivate species that aren't dioecious naturally to become so :) https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/16/how-urban-planners-preference-for-male-trees-has-made-your-hay-fever-worse https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/16/how-urba... And of course some species are cloned because it faster and cheaper, so then female saplings aren't a problem. You clone what has higher demand. > I would imagine that we can actually do a lot to accelerate the process of trees spreading over an area. Yes I was a little facetious. I don't actually plan to persuade people not to have kids or not to do gardening. But when I see people gathering millions of dollars to use drones to plant trees I can't help but think it's focusing on the wrong (but cool) part of the problem.
- monkeycantype 5y ago
  Hello Ajuc and Firad, I don’t literally mean plant trees, what I mean is that unlike fruit-jet-miles, the carbon cost of people isn’t n * constant, people can make choices and take actions including actions that are carbon negative.
Robotbeat 5y ago
Only the leaves (and maybe other green and exposed parts) of a tree do photosynthesis. The rest of the tree provides structure and protection and nutrients and most of the carbon is sequestered in the structure and roots, not in the photosynthetic part. Human civilization, as it becomes more reliant on solar power, essentially becomes photosynthetic. Already, sustainable harvesting of trees to make long-lived structures can sequester more carbon than a tree does as it decomposes on the forest floor at the end of its life (emitted CO2 and a bunch of methane, which is worse). But we can also do “photosynthesis” more directly by using photovoltaics to produce hydrocarbons from direct captured CO2 and water. In fact, going back to the space meme, this is already done on the International Space Station as a side effect of the life support system. Water is split into oxygen (for the crew) and hydrogen. The hydrogen was originally just vented to space along with CO2 (expelled by the crew) captured from the cabin air, but they realized they could combine the hydrogen with the CO2 and recover the oxygen in the form of water, with the hydrocarbon methane as the byproduct. The methane is vented to space normally, but then they realized they could use the methane and reform it into polyethylene and hydrogen (which can be recycled to capture more oxygen form CO2). The polyethylene could be used in the 3D printers on the space station to produce structures. (NASA hasn’t accomplished this methane to polyethylene goal, yet, although methane-to-polyethylene/polypropylene is done on Earth via methane to methanol, then methanol to olefins). This is, essentially, a synthetic kind of photosynthesis. NASA funded SBIR grants to try to demonstrate this process. And there’s no reason you can’t make any kind of hydrocarbon this way from water and CO2 (hydrogen and CO—which can be made from CO2, as Perseverance demonstrated—are synthesis gases which can be used via the Fischer-Tropsch process to produce any hydrocarbon). In this way, as the mass of a photovoltaic-centric human civilization (buildings and infrastructure and machines) in the form of carbon fiber and wood and resins grows, it is sequestering carbon in its own structure, just like a tree does. So humans (with their houses and buildings, etc) can, in fact, become carbon negative as we transition to clean energy including for utilizing synthesized (or natural) hydrocarbons (or sustainably harvested wood) for structural materials.