4 ms·

Seems like planting trees is easy enough? What is wrong with projects like that?

by pfisch 3y ago

moralestapia 3y ago
* Some people sell you a forest that was already there. * Some people will sell you a future forest that will never be there. * Even if we cover all available land with trees, it won't be enough. See, https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/ffgc.2020.00058/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/ffgc.2020.00058... * Most of these projects are bullshit as well. See, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/18/revealed-forest-carbon-offsets-biggest-provider-worthless-verra-aoe https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/18/revealed... * There's an ongoing debate on whether or not forests are permanent carbon storage, because forests burn quite often and put CO2 back into the atmosphere very quickly. See, https://www.ft.com/content/d54d5526-6f56-4c01-8207-7fa7e532fa09 https://www.ft.com/content/d54d5526-6f56-4c01-8207-7fa7e532f....
joshvm 3y ago
It's complicated, but John Oliver did a good segment on it. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6p8zAbFKpW0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6p8zAbFKpW0 Planting trees is not an easy solution. https://e360.yale.edu/features/phantom-forests-tree-planting-climate-change https://e360.yale.edu/features/phantom-forests-tree-planting... A major problem is that monitoring and verification is patchy. A carbon credit is in theory something like X ton-years, but there is no guarantee that what you pay for will be around in X years and policing us extremely difficult. X is traditionally 100 years. If I sell you a carbon credit and then cut all my trees down, what happens? Another is fraudulent sites - people selling credits for sites that already exist, we're already planned for protection, etc.
michaelt 3y ago
How do I know the new trees have really been planted, and that they haven't sold them dozens of times over? How do I know the trees will survive and actually pull carbon out of the atmosphere, rather than dying in a year or two? Which they might do, if they're planted on unsuitable but cheap land. How do I know that, in 20 years time, they won't have gone out of business and sold the land on to a logging company who turns it all into firewood? There's also a wealth of scammers who'll do things like "buy rainforest to protect it from development" when no development was going to happen anyway.

Seems like planting trees is easy enough? What is wrong with projects like that?

by pfisch 3y ago

Seems like planting trees is easy enough? What is wrong with projects like that?

* Some people sell you a forest that was already there. * Some people will sell you a future forest that will never be there. * Even if we cover all available land with trees, it won't be enough. See, https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/ffgc.2020.00058/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/ffgc.2020.00058... * Most of these projects are bullshit as well. See, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/18/revealed-forest-carbon-offsets-biggest-provider-worthless-verra-aoe https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/18/revealed... * There's an ongoing debate on whether or not forests are permanent carbon storage, because forests burn quite often and put CO2 back into the atmosphere very quickly. See, https://www.ft.com/content/d54d5526-6f56-4c01-8207-7fa7e532fa09 https://www.ft.com/content/d54d5526-6f56-4c01-8207-7fa7e532f....

joshvm 3y ago

It's complicated, but John Oliver did a good segment on it. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6p8zAbFKpW0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6p8zAbFKpW0 Planting trees is not an easy solution. https://e360.yale.edu/features/phantom-forests-tree-planting-climate-change https://e360.yale.edu/features/phantom-forests-tree-planting... A major problem is that monitoring and verification is patchy. A carbon credit is in theory something like X ton-years, but there is no guarantee that what you pay for will be around in X years and policing us extremely difficult. X is traditionally 100 years. If I sell you a carbon credit and then cut all my trees down, what happens? Another is fraudulent sites - people selling credits for sites that already exist, we're already planned for protection, etc.

michaelt 3y ago

How do I know the new trees have really been planted, and that they haven't sold them dozens of times over? How do I know the trees will survive and actually pull carbon out of the atmosphere, rather than dying in a year or two? Which they might do, if they're planted on unsuitable but cheap land. How do I know that, in 20 years time, they won't have gone out of business and sold the land on to a logging company who turns it all into firewood? There's also a wealth of scammers who'll do things like "buy rainforest to protect it from development" when no development was going to happen anyway.