The most effective way to fight global warming? Just plant a billion new trees

Tom Crowther, a scientist studying climate change from the Swiss University of the ETH in Zurich, came to this conclusion. The best thing is that this extra trillion could be planted in places where trees would not bother anyone.

Crowther must have quite an original mind. How else to sum up a man who four years ago tried to estimate the number of living trees on our planet as accurately as possible? By the way, this figure amounts to 3 trillion, which is much more than the previous estimates of NASA (about 400 billion). After counting all the trees, Crowther dealt with another problem, which is as follows: how many trees should be planted to inhibit the effects of global warming?

Trees versus global warming.

The scientist and his team calculated that there is enough space on our planet for an additional 1.2 trillion trees. And that planting such a number would bring enormous benefits in terms of absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide, the main engine of climate change.

"The amount of coal that we can restore if we plant 1.2 billion trees or at least let these trees grow, would be much higher than the next best solution for climate change," says Crowther.

Since these studies are currently being reviewed for publication in the journal Science, Crowther claims that he can not provide accurate data on how much exactly a ton of CO2 would absorb an additional trillion of trees. Instead, he points to numbers from Drawdown - a non-profit project that classifies climate solutions according to the amount of CO2 that they can remove from the atmosphere.

Recall: global annual CO2 emissions currently amount to approx. 37 billion tons. The Drawdown ranking shows that the most CO2 would be saved thanks to skillful management of greenhouse gas release from refrigerators and air conditioners - approx. 90 billion tons. Crowther claims that his calculations show that 1.2 trillion trees would result in a much greater reduction.

Where to plant a billion trees?

Quietly, Dr. Crowther's team also addressed the issue. All locations identified by scientists are on the so-called degraded areas and planting trees there would not threaten the contraction of agricultural or urban areas. The use of degraded areas has one more important advantage - forests planted in such places will not threaten other ecosystems - grasslands, savannas, etc.

- All the models that previously existed about where to restore the forest have neglected this problem. In our case, we dealt with comprehensive modeling, in which forests are only one element of the global ecosystem - says Crowther.

The forest planting map, created by the Crowther team, is made available to the Plant for The Planet organization (PFTP), which since 2006 has been implementing the Billion Tree campaign funded since 2007 by the UN. The progress achieved so far by PFTP is quite impressive. The organization can boast of planting 15 billion trees in areas scattered around the globe. An optimistic element in this information is also the fact that many countries are involved in the PFTP mission. In India alone, thanks to cooperation with the local government, PFTP has already planted 2 billion trees.

- I think that a billion trees is a result that we can achieve. - says PFTP president, Sagar Aryal.

The simplest solutions often turn out to be the best

Planting a trillion of trees does not seem to be particularly interesting. Crowther and PFTP do not even mention anything about the cloning and genetic editing of the most efficient species in terms of CO2 absorption . Oh, they just plant some trees.

In comparison to other ideas, those who included such concepts, such as spraying in the upper part of the atmosphere special gases capable of reflecting off some of the sun's rays , literally pumping excess greenhouse gases into space, or pumping them into special tanks, which would be stored in the bottom of the oceans , the idea with trees seems almost boring.

In my opinion, it is his great advantage. Boring ideas do not interest the public, so you can implement them in peace. These 15 billion trees planted by PFTP, which no one has heard of, is the best proof of this thesis. Another great advantage of this plan is that it does not require too much commitment in terms of coordination.

All you need is a map of areas where trees will not disturb anyone, the rest can be taken care of by local foundations and single volunteers. After all, the tree planting process itself is not overly complicated.

I know what I am saying - I already have dozens of seedlings in my account, which have easily adopted (and are currently creating a quite nice, small forest) despite my zero knowledge of fruit-growing. If scientists say tree planting may prove to be the most effective way to combat global warming, nothing prevents us from trying this idea. In the worst case, we'll create some new, pretty forests on our planet.

The most effective way to fight global warming? Just plant a billion new trees