The most effective way to tackle climate change? Plant a trillion trees

I remember hearing about it.. but it should be news head title.

Also, by making it a socially distributed action. To make people relearn, take part, take ownership, spend more time out.. it could probably cost less.

The fact that it costs 50 million a year is incredible. That's less than 0.1% of what the UK government spends on interest on it's debts per year.

Does that $47m cost include the price of the land?

If the government doesn't have that much viable tree-planting space available then they either have to seize it which would make some people very unhappy, or compulsorily purchase it which would push the cost up a lot. That isn't a reason not to do it, but in order to talk about it you need to be clear about what you're actually talking about.

China's planting a Great Green Wall [1], with another 66 billion trees. However it's struggling with dropping groundwater and species monoculture [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-North_Shelter_Forest_Pro...

[2] https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/04/china-great-gree...

That maths don't add up. If 200 countries need to do 989bn, then they need to do 4.945, let's say 5.

If we consider countries with more population are going to plant more (so trees per capita perhaps). We could go with landmass but it takes money/people to do this, so let's go with capita.

Pakistan being a highly populated country and so needs to plan more than the 5bn average (they did 10).

But there is a very long tail of small countries in that list of 200 so many more small countries. Most will go below the average needed and so won't stack up.

> Planting 989bn trees for the other 200 countries should not be too difficult.

Can I add this to the HN Weekend Projects list next to Dropbox, Facebook, and Twitter?

Are there stats on what percentage of these trees are still alive?

Poland is paying up to 2000 euro per ha (for up to 12 years) for converting agriculture land into forrest. There is also a lot of additional subsidies for forrests on private land which can add up to few thousand euro.

You can actually make small but stable profit from buying land and converting into forest.

> Priority will be given to those who intend to plant a forest in the so-called ecological corridors, in areas threatened by water erosion, in areas adjacent to inland waters and forests, in areas with a slope of more than 12 degrees. Also, those who have land for afforestation in voivodships with a forest cover of less than 30% will get points. Depending on the species composition of the crop and the previously mentioned criteria, the amount of support can range from PLN 4,984 to PLN 7,624 per hectare. In addition, payment is possible for fencing of crops.

Link in Polish: http://www.lasy.gov.pl/pl/informacje/aktualnosci/jak-zdobyc-...

> think a green field is nature

I see these areas basically as factories, albeit we do have the kind of food security our ancestors could only dream of. Would be fantastic to see more forested areas and associated 're-wilding' projects. Could be hugely beneficial in so many ways if only people can take the long view.

Any idea which UK charities would be the best to contribute to to get tree coverage up as quickly as possible? I've looked at the woodland trust, but equally I'm thinking that in terms of reducing CO2 my money might be more effective being deployed in another country.

Thick forests everywhere also aren’t nature. Today’s wild animals and the megafauna we made go extinct usually pretty well kept the land open.

There was a map of France and England once which showed relative age of forests compared to e.g. Germany, which correlated with ship manufacturing (wooden of course) which Germany (did not really exist then anyway) did not participate in at the time.

I often rant about this, when people from home bemoan about tropical deforestation (which is of course terrible) and go on about how "they" are destroying the planet. When asking what they are doing about the problem closer to home they look at me like I am crazy.

Where are the protests to confiscate arable land for reforestation in the UK. Where is the public will to pay a higher % for food due to less arable land. Where is the willingness to accept a lower standard of living (in the short term at least) due to reforestation of the UK. All of which they expect of 3rd world countries, but not for their home country.

The above is never going to happen, but I often wonder whether instead of hegerows around the patchwork of fields we have in the UK it is mandated to be 2-3 trees thick. Sure some land would be lost, but not much and as anyone who has flown into the UK, a huge % of the country is a patchwork of fields, that should be a significant number of new tree planting

[...]in the UK as we have a significantly lower percentage of tree cover compared to Europe,[...]

Please use "...compared to _the rest of_ Europe" next time. That stresses the very real commonalities between European countries. Civilised people using inclusive language are our only hope for a brexit process without too much bruising. Little things like this can really help.

I apologise for injecting that completely off topic remark into this conversation and will shut up now. I probably deserve some karma burning, just not too much please.

P.S. Thank you for you comment about tree cover and the world wars in the UK. I just read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forestry_in_the_United_Kingdom with great interest.

The first few tree planting drives in Tamil Nadu (a southern state of India; it's capital Chennai recently ran out of water) got significant public backlash [0] for this reason: they planted nothing but Acacia trees (due to their short growth term) and the leaves took a long time to degrade, killing all the undergrowth and creating a monoculture.

[0] https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/Acacia-rem...!

This approach considers biodiversity & self-sustainability: https://fellowsblog.ted.com/how-to-grow-a-forest-really-real...

It’s also important to choose local species. Planting a non-native tree species causes unexpected problems long term. See the eucalyptus problem in California.

If the trees are used for wood or paper production, replanting logged trees is economically a no brainer.

Yes, though as an interim measure it's a start. A very large stock of trees can renew itself, so while individual trees return most or all of the carbon they capture, the stock of all trees becomes a stable stock of carbon sequestered from the atmosphere.

That doesn't solve the problem of increasing CO2 emissions, but it blunts the trajectory and with any luck prevents some of the more destructive potential positive feedback loops from winding up.

Suppose 8 billion people and 1 trillion trees. Each person should plant 125 trees. Neat law though.

It's closer to 129, though that is still a big number.

Also, https://www.trilliontreecampaign.org/donate-trees quotes several projects with a low price of EUR 0.10 per tree.

If they put all of the climate change money into a pot we have enough. Politics decides it is more important to give to a company or class of people in the name of climate change.

I can't speak on the Kenyan project you linked, but I did recently complete a 3000 tree habitat project. Even at bulk rates we purchased our trees at between $0.80-0.90 per tree. It took 3 people about 5-6 hours to complete the actual planting using a tractor and a tree planter. Outside of the actual purchase of the trees, other things to consider are: Labor was unpaid, however the county has a cost-sharing program we could have applied for which would have paid ~$8/hr per person to offset labor costs. I wouldn't be surprised if many of these non-profits use volunteer labor but also take advantage of reforestation grants to offset the cost. We borrowed the equipment and only used a couple gallons of diesel, but normally renting that equipment for the day would have been in the hundreds of dollars. Plenty of hours were spent meeting with state foresters to plan where the trees would go for maximum effect and deciding which species to plant. We had to transport the trees from the nursery and store them until they were planted. There is also a very limited window of time between when they are harvested at the nursery and when they need to be planted. If you wait too long many will die. Also to note that we had to call at least 4 nurseries to get the order we wanted. There is a limited supply of seedlings available each season and you have to plan well in advance if you need more than a couple hundred trees. At about a month out we're noticing about 10% dead loss, which is better than expected. Over the next year that could inflate to 30%. The goal shouldn't be to just plant 1T trees, it needs to be adding 1T new healthy trees to the environment, which means you would have to plant 1T + X0B extra to cover the dead loss.

So $1T in cost is a good ballpark to start with, but don't be surprised if it balloons pretty quick. Tree planting doesn't scale as efficiently as we might like.

Ping. You haven't yet responded to my question on another thread.

Yes. A tree can be planted when its the size of a bean sprout. I can put a million sprouts in one acre. The target is easy to achieve. Out of those million trees I plant, only 50 will survive.

nuclear obviously, the most effective and green way to produce energy

Existing forests are neutral. Growing new ones is not.

There is a case for burying charcoal,

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/407754/the-case-for-buryi...

buried trunks decompose though

Wouldn't the solution be planting enough new trees to replace the newly-dead ones? i.e. keeping a sufficient mass of trees growing, always? That way, you'd have a continual carbon sink?

I remember when the whole 'CO2 neutral' thing came into my mind, not long ago when I read the article about the 53 year old sealed garden [1].

Definitely interesting, but I think that a fast-growing tree would probably create more O2 (consume more CO2) in its first 10 or so years. I think that big, old forests where large pieces of wood are dropping and rotting, etc, may tend to be on the neutral side of things.

I think that some studying of what type of trees to plant, etc is definitely in order. Certainly some drop less - and quite possibly they determine that the trees need cut down, turned to paper or paper products, and replanted every number of years.

When I think of the situation you are describing (CO2 neutral), I picture a dense, damp forest area. I feel like trees, properly spaced, may lean more toward co2 consumption.

Anyway, just a thought...

[1] https://biologicperformance.com/sealed-bottle-terrarium-gard...

What do you think the heavy dense part of the tree is made from ? Yes largely carbon.

Is rate out same as rate coming in? I really don't think that is the case, what would the natural cause be to make an exact match between rot and growth? Duff accumulates, forest floors rise.

I twice submitted a great talk that goes into more depth on this and other things, but both times it failed to get many views ([1] [2]), despite my having a hunch that there would be significant interest in it. Any thoughts on how to give the talk some more visibility?

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20150835

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20057134

Something like this? :) https://www.trilliontreecampaign.org

I almost think you're joking, since this already exists.

https://www.trilliontrees.org/

You can also look at this the other way round:

By buying a Christmas tree, you create a market for those trees which makes people plant them. This leads to several generations of trees growing at any time, so that there is a net-reduction of CO2.

The Christmas Tree Carbon Question is more complicated than you might think.

https://www.sightline.org/2015/12/21/your-christmas-trees-ca...

The tl;dr is that usually cut trees are better in terms of carbon footprint, but not always.

Is it really only fifty years? I would have guessed a couple hundred at least. Climate change is really a time problem. Given hundreds of years we'll be off carbon based economies purely for economic reasons. In fact I think that will largely be true in less than a century. So anything like this that buys us time may actually be all it takes.

But how about stopping deforestation? That seems like it would be more effective - pay developing countries based on maintaining their forested areas, policed using satellite data. I think we should also focus on planting trees and basically every other mitigation we can at the same time - doing one thing doesn't preclude others.

This is being done with some success in the rain forests of one of those deforestation happy palm oil producers, Indonesia.

https://www.wri.org/blog/2019/02/indonesia-reduces-deforesta...

The trees can be gasified and turned into biochar, and buried into the soil to capture the carbon and improve the soil quality (while generating electricity and heat). Then new trees can be planted in their place. Or they can be used to build buildings which sequesters carbon similarly (albeit for a shorter span of time).

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing!

> but they emit more Carbon than they absorb

That’s a strange way to put it. The trees form a carbon reservoir. If they burn or decompose then they release carbon. But they cannot grow and release carbon indefinitely. If they emit carbon long enough then there won’t be trees left. On the other hand if the total mass of trees grows long enough they will have trapped more carbon.

> should be the way we lead and liaise with this problem instead of `go plant more trees`.

Why should it be one or the other? Let's do both (plus many more things).

Even the authors of this study mention that "planting trees" isn't enough, even for the CO2 issue alone, since planting trees is merely a mitigation for past damage.

Good luck with that.

To reach the 2030 and 2050 targets (-45%, -100%), this change alone would be very insufficient. It would help during the second half of the century though, when emissions will likely need to be negative.

It has a similar economical value to having an army.

we should plant food producing trees

also if we don't stem climate change, it is likely that no one will exist nevermind money

" all the locations identified by his team are on degraded land, rather than agricultural or urban areas"

The light difference between winter and summer get too extreme for most trees far enough north. The soil is also extremely poor. This gets brought up by people who think Canada would be hugely successful in a warmer climate, but even if there's no permafrost, the growing season won't change.

Well, by my Maths, 10^18 would require close to 7,000 trees for every square meter of dry land on the planet Earth. Even if we allow the use of Bonsai, that would be a stretch :)

Trillion is 10^12 in both British and US English.

Yes, trees reduce particulates https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-37813709

"A study by US-based The Nature Conservancy (TNC) reported than the average reduction of particulate matter near a tree was between 7% and 24%."

>What about nitrogen?

There are several trees are nitrogen fixing species, they're a pretty important part of permaculture. Some of the mycorrhizal networks that exist in many forests also fix nitrogen. Also, some species like pine trees get a lot of their nitrogen from endophytes living in their tissue.

There are a couple really cool drone tree planter projects out there that are able to plant thousands of trees an hour. https://www.fastcompany.com/40450262/these-tree-planting-dro...

Building nuclear power plants is something we should be doing, however simply constructing enough nuclear power plants to replace all fossil fuel plants would create an insane amount of carbon dioxide before they even go online.

Creating cement/concrete is one of the primary sources of CO2 emissions - producing a cubic yard of concrete (about 3900 lbs) is responsible for emitting about 400 lbs of CO2. Of course then you have to factor in all of the CO2 produced for manufacturing the structural steel, the fossil fuels that go into all the plastics and wiring, etc.

Replacing fossil fuels with nuclear helps prevent further CO2 emission but doesn’t mitigate past emissions.

What’s already been released is enough to have already changed the climate and will continue warming the planet as long as it’s in the atmosphere.

Planting trees helps remove CO2 from the atmosphere that we’ve already released.

We should be both planting trees (to reverse past emissions) and changing our energy sources (to minimize future emissions).

No, trees don't just regrow if you've cut them down on a large scale. The landscape changes permanently.