Why planting trees will help with climate change
- Simrah Bawa
- Sep 3, 2021
- 2 min read
The discussion of climate change proposes a dark and pessimistic mood, and, although it is a problem large and prominent, there are so many different things we can do to slow down climate change, perhaps even reverse its effects. One of these solutions is planting trees. MRP’s main goal is to plant trees to reduce climate change, but one may wonder how planting trees will help with climate change. What do trees do that can help us combat climate change?
Well, a large part of climate change is the large amount of carbon humans release every single day. Our daily lifestyle activities cause us to do so. However, trees are one of the most carbon sucking aspects of our environment. According to ArborDay, when there’s an acre of fully grown trees, the amount of CO2 absorbed is the same as the amount that cars produce when driven 26,000 miles. One mature tree, according to the European Environment Agency, can suck about or greater than 48 pounds of CO2 and release the same amount of oxygen. This would mean that the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere would reduce significantly depending on the amount of trees there are. Adding more trees to our plant will increase the amount of carbon-absorbing elements, therefore reducing carbon and the effects of climate change in our world. In theory this should work, but recent studies have shown it does work practically as well. In a NASA article, a scientist named Jean-Francois Bastin is mentioned to have led research “for estimating Earth’s forest restoration potential” (Alan Buis, 2019). It was found that 205 gigatons of carbon dioxide would be reduced if the world had a little over a half trillion trees. This amount of carbon reverses twenty years of the carbon emissions at the current rate.
Right now, 30 percent of the carbon is absorbed by our plants and soil. Over the last fifty years, however, deforestation has increased at an alarming rate. In fact, 7.3 million hectares have been lost every single year, and the amount of rainforests destroyed is shocking and unfortunate. Because of this, the emissions of carbon have also significantly increased and the impacts of climate change are rising quicker and more abruptly. By planting trees, humans are seeking a path that may somehow reverse these big and bad effects. Trees are one of the most convenient and effective ways to stop global warming.
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