Tree planting is a great idea that could become a dangerous climate distraction | Hacker News Reader

Tree planting is a great idea that could become a dangerous climate distraction

technologyreview.com

54 pointssmacktoward35 comments

>> And it’s hard to read Republican’s sudden enthusiasm for tree planting as anything other than a cynical effort to dampen growing calls for the sorts of regulations and taxes required to bring about those changes.

Rather than going scorched earth on common-ground, why not see it as a stepping-stone, an opportunity to draw the other side toward your way of seeing things... and maybe even suggest more small, achievable steps for the other side to move in your direction rather than pulling out a cudgel?

Perhaps because the “other side” has spent thirty years fighting tooth and nail to stop even the most modest attempts to address the problem?

When people spend that long telling you what they want, it’s generally safe to believe them.

Probably so, but when someone steps in the direction you want them to go, its not effective to whack them for it. If you want them to continue down your path you say "Well done! But, can you take just one more small step?"

The hope is that these steps accumulate into something meaningful. A virtuous upward spiral.

There is evidence that performing minor activities like tree planting actually reduces willingness to take meaningful action against climate change. This is called the 'low cost' hypothesis [1].

If you wanted to reduce public pressure against fossil fuels you would instigate something exactly like a tree planting program.

[1] https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolec/v166y2019ic2.html

Treeplanting itself is of mixed usefulness. I've done some treeplanting, sometimes it's done well, native species are used, trees are planted properly in appropriate spots, other times, no care in tree selection is used, and introduced/invasive or just unsuitable trees are planted, trees are planted inmproperly or in locations where they won't grow and a lot of money and time ends up wasted for no benefits.

> that performing minor activities

Can I assume you are also opposed to straw and plastic bag bans? Unlike tree planting which at least does something, those bans are almost entirely worthless.

Neither of those have anything to do with climate change.

Plastic production requires oil

Plastic incineration creates CO2.

Bans on straws and plastic bags have a direct measurable impact on local marine wildlife and in the reduction of microplastics.

Now that Asian countries are introducing bans, we should start seeing slowing microplastic accumulation. Within a decade microplastic accumulation should peak. By then we'll have more efficient means of addressing microplastic pollution.

One point not often brought up is that microplastics in the ocean contribute to ocean temperature rise, since the plastics are able to retain (and thus radiate) more thermal energy. This one of the reasons the great garbage patches are hypoxic--warmer water holds less oxygen.

> The hope is that these steps accumulate into something meaningful. A virtuous upward spiral.

Or, if let's say the other side isn't working in good faith, they could then hold it up as "proof" they have done their part and ride that "effort" for another 30-40 years.

If you want to build cooperation then praising any progress, no matter how small it might seem, is usually a good idea.

Sure there might be more disagreement down the road but any bipartisan action on climate change is better than none.

We want people to feel good about positive actions taken so when we have to pressure them again they have a reason to care and turn about. Any positive movement means they're slipping, realize they're slipping and have to do something to appease critics. But doing too little makes them a hypocrite and opens them to additional criticism. Which this article is an example of.

If I'm damned either way I'm going to go to hell doing as I please.

So what you are saying, is that criticizing them for any progress is more effective?

If you mean the environmentalists and nuclear power, I agree. Nuclear power really is the only serious answer to climate change.

It's hard to know if climate change would even be an issue if protesters of the 70s, 80s, and 90s wouldn't have made any investment into nuclear power so difficult.

Stepping stones would have worked 40 years ago. We are at the precipice now and must take radical action if we are to mitigate the damage that is baked into the current climate model given the carbon ppm levels we're at now.

Bah, humbug. You still have to be nice and compromise, you can't just expect everyone to go along.

Frankly, the science isn't settled, it's such terrible rhetoric. As though science settles things that can't actually be measured until they happen.

(Ah! Did you see that? Your radicalism made me defensive and elicited my extreme response! I'm not a denier, I just find uncompromising rhetoric deeply dysfunctional)

>You still have to be nice and compromise

If the ship is sinking you don't have to be nice and compromise with those bailing water into the ship. You have to tie them up and throw them below deck so they don't impede the bailing. Then afterwards you have up try them for mutiny.

Climate extremists (not you, but those who take this belief 2-3x further) are a major threat to modern civ. Who else fervently believes that killing off 50% of people on Earth and completely overturning the modern political-economic system is a better alternative than the status quo?

You're conflating ecofascism with activists who know that neoliberal tinkering with carbon taxes is a recipe for failure.

Cool, it doesn't matter, carbon doesn't care about your rhetorical exercises. We're heading towards an extinction event and once this realization reaches critical mass, it's going to get ugly.

Common ground would be building nuclear power plants. Big, beautiful and numerous.

Planting trees is feel-good-do-nothing.

Honest question here, who actually thinks the political structures in place today can provide the change needed in the timeframe we have? I'm honestly putting those odds at < 1%. I mean, it looks like the only actual option is geohacking, but that's not talked about much yet. The distraction is this obsession with trying to make a broken system solve a problem it can't solve.

I have absolutely no confidence that this can be solved politically - the societal measures required at the current time would cause an immediate civil war.

However, I have full confidence that this can be solved technically if people of good-will keep progressing to better, cheaper, and more economical solutions.

> people of good-will > economical solutions

Narrator: It still requires a political solution

As if economics isn't political?

Some part of the solution will probably involve forcibly taking away some of the freedoms people have.

We have the freedom in the United States to go out and buy a car and drive it as much as one likes until it physically cannot be driven anymore. There is no limit on the amount of fuel one can expend or emissions one person can make by driving. And cars are a major contributor to the emissions problem.

If people are not willing to give up driving gasoline-powered cars because they have the freedom to say no, will we simply abandon efforts to make people change their driving habits or enforce greater restrictions on their emissions?

It feels like a drastic solution, but the effects of climate change are also drastic. I'm not sure they can be solved with feel-good measures like planting trees when more and more people choose activities with emissions which will wipe out any gains because it's convenient to do so in car-based societies and everyone else does it.

EVs would be a good first step if we can manufacture enough, somehow convince everyone there's enough personal benefit to switch and source electricity from renewable sources. But most of the country still runs on gas at the moment.

The U.S. not only has the freedom, but the subsidization; be it roads that aren't paying property tax, fuel taxes that don't earn enough to maintain existing roads, delayed maintenance -- but all of the way to oil exploration rights.

The 18.4c federal gasoline tax should be almost doubled to 34c, ignoring that road construction costs have outpaced inflation.

Where car accidents were a leading cause of accidental injury and death hospitals (especially rural) and have costs exceeding inflation and medical debt is a major cause of bankruptcy and I hospital tax deduction.

I have zero confidence that existing political structures can solve this problem. So much so that I view any political attempts at addressing climate change as a net increase in carbon emissions (because it is a waste of energy).

Even if a carbon tax was implemented in some countries, emissions would just move to countries with no tax. The only way to enforce it on a world-wide scale is war. War would emit so much carbon that it would defeat the purpose of enforcing carbon taxes.

Tree planting is important, but tree harvesting is also important. A tree's mass comes from C02 absorbed from the air, and hardly anything out of the soil. Lumber products are an incredibly important carbon sink when done correctly and the entire process needs to be measured for net negative effect.

What's wrong with tree-planting? Unlike cutting back emissions which does nothing to remove CO2 that's already in the air, trees actually do remove CO2 from the air.

If you read the article, they discuss it there.

They really don't. The whole article is basically a long winded elaboration of the title.

Trees planted in the US and EU generally result in darkening the Earth's albedo, meaning that the Earth absorbs more solar energy than it otherwise would, resulting in increased warming.

Trees planted in the tropical climates, especially in those areas where trees were removed, generally have the opposite effect because they encourage cloud formation, lightening the earth's albedo and reflecting more solar energy away from the planet.

Citation, please.

My understanding as a layperson is that trees do pull CO2 from the air, but they trap it in the tree itself, rather than putting it back in the ground. When the tree dies, or is cut down, or burns in a wildfire, "most of the carbon trapped in their trunks, branches, and leaves simply returns to the atmosphere".

I'm all for planting more trees; but it took hundreds of millions of years for all the carbon of dead organic matter to accumulate as it has, and we're returning it to the atmosphere (and ocean) in the space of a few hundred years. It's infinitely easier to not pull that carbon out of the ground in the first place, rather than trying to put it back.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com