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Comment by Nydhal | Hacker News Reader

There's a few "Plants and trees won't do" comments here, which really misses the entire point of regenerative methods. Earth is an entire complex living system. Thinking of it as a simple chemical matter of CO2 is a very reductionist take. The point is to sequester carbon but ALSO trigger other cooling dynamics and reducing certain industrial practices that themselves release CO2. Too many engineers need to study complex systems and holistic approaches. The amount of patronizing makes me think of the fatal engineering flaw of "It can't be this simple".

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Nevertheless, plants and trees won't do it. They grow pretty much everywhere already where they can. Nature is better at reclaiming those areas than we are - there are an estimated three trillion trees in the world.

Then there's the problem that there's no significant process that turns trees into sequestered carbon for longer than the trees' lifespan.

The reason it's important to keep saying this is that lots of people participate in these tree planting drives. They feel all accomplished and that they did their part. But if that doesn't have any real impact on the problem, then we've done lots of work, used up people's goodwill, but not dented the problem.

> They feel all accomplished and that they did their part. But if that doesn't have any real impact on the problem, then we've done lots of work, used up people's goodwill, but not dented the problem.

Does the evidence support that people's goodwill get "used up"?

It seems as plausible a theory to me that, when people get involved and take direct action, it ends up driving them to take further actions. Being personally invested in the result may drive more action rather than using up the goodwill.

(To be clear, I agree that we should always encourage action with the highest impact, and if tree planting actually does nothing to help solve the problem, then we should direct people to other activities. I'm not really jumping in to defend tree-planting initiatives, but more to question the assumption that people have a fixed amount of effort that they're willing to put into a given problem)

>Does the evidence support that people's goodwill get "used up"?

That's a good question. I assume it will be both for different groups of people. From my personal experience it seems to be that way, but I'm unaware of any studies on the subject.

Yep, I have no idea which would have a more significant impact.

Both seem reasonably plausible to me. I'd definitely be interested in what the results turn out to be!

> there's no significant process that turns trees into sequestered carbon for longer than the trees' lifespan.

There is of course lumber, which can sequester CO2 for decades or hundreds of years. Lumber sequestration currently only amounts to ~1% of global annual carbon emissions, but regionally it can be big (9% in Sweden) [1]. Lumber might have a bigger impact if purposefully employed for sequestration and prioritized over other carbon positive building materials.

1 https://www.pnas.org/content/116/29/14526

It's true that there are "other cooling dynamics".

But most of those don't involve trees. And "reducing certain industrial practices" has nothing to do with trees.

So I don't really understand your point. It's correct that we shouldn't be too reductionist, but even if we avoid reductionism it's still correct to say that plants and trees won't do the job, and is not "missing the entire point of regenerative methods".

Trees actually can provide tremendous cooling dynamics, beyond CO2 absorption. They provide shade at ground level. If every house in the US were surrounded by trees instead of useless lawns, energy use for both heating and cooling would be lower, so you’d get emissions reductions AND carbon absorption.

Also through evapotranspiration.

Tree effectively swampcoolers.

Thank you, you have put it well. By no means I'm nature-knows-best person. But in this case nature does a great job in 'removing' CO2 by expending the least energy, with the least negative impact (actually a net positive) to the environment. Of course it's more nuanced than what even I stated. A wise engineer realizes the breadth of the issues and the 'true' engineering approach IMO will necessarily involve ( but not limited) a lot of trees/plants/algae etc.

Highly recommend Thinking in Systems or Limits to Growth, both by Donella Meadows.

Plant and trees are definitely a very good solution. The real engineering challenge is really : 1. how to measure precisely how much carbon is in that tree and this other one here. 2. how to plant them efficiently so you can remove 1000T of co2 per year.

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