“Crowther emphasised that it remains vital to reverse the current trends of rising greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and forest destruction, and bring them down to zero. He said this is needed to stop the climate crisis becoming even worse and because the forest restoration envisaged would take 50-100 years to have its full effect of removing 200bn tonnes of carbon”
200bn tonnes? Apparently humanity releases at the moment almost 40bn CO2 tonnes per year (1). All that trees then replace only 5 years.
1) https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aaf303
"CO2 emissions grew by 1.6% in 2017 to 36.2 Gt (billion tonnes), and are expected to grow a further 2.7% in 2018 (range: 1.8%–3.7%) to a record 37.1 ± 2 Gt CO2 (Le Quéré et al 2018b)."