3 ms·

Let's say a tree takes 25m^2 in space. The average tree can bind roughly 50kg of CO2 per year. If a human emits ~10.000kg of CO2 per year, you need to maintain

Let's say a tree takes 25m^2 in space. The average tree can bind roughly 50kg of CO2 per year. If a human emits ~10.000kg of CO2 per year, you need to maintain 200 trees for each human. Let's take Germany as reference. You need to plant 80 million (people) times 200 trees. In total this is an area of 4*10^11 m^2=400.000km^2 Funnily, this is roughly the size of Germany! So that Germany is long term CO2 neutral, you need to plant (and keep healthy) a forest as big as Germany. No scale this up for the world, impossible. That's the problem.

pkphilip 3y ago
The advantage with photosynthesis is that it also produces side products which are usually edible, tasty .. and perhaps useful for making furniture. Also, it is low maintenance compared to a lot of alternate options
- roflmaostc 3y ago
  Yes but it seems it is at least an order of magnitude (or more) to slow/small to compensate CO2 emission of humanity. And a lot of plants don't bind CO2 for a long time. Even trees have to be replaced by ~100 years and then if burnt or rotted they release CO2 again. If you wait very long and you apply the right physical conditions, they might turn into oil again which was a good long term storage.