‘Greenwashing’: Tree-Planting Schemes Are Just Creating Tree Cemeteries | Hacker News Reader

‘Greenwashing’: Tree-Planting Schemes Are Just Creating Tree Cemeteries

vice.com

28 pointsisaacfrond17 comments

The headline is overly pessimistic and implies tree planting schemes are all worthless and doomed to failure. There are fairly proven methods for planting forests, for instance: https://daily.jstor.org/the-miyawaki-method-a-better-way-to-...

The title seems inaccurate? This individual tree planting attempt by a small uk town was mismanaged. It’s unclear how that supports the titles claim that all or many or most tree planting “schemes” are failures.

Also big lmao at this quote: “critics say that tree planting takes decades to benefit the environment”

The problem they describe is widespread, I've heard of many similar stories across the globe. For example Turkey [1].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/30/most-of-11m-tr...

Last time I booked plane tickets there was an option to pay to offset the CO2 emitted by the flight. Looking at their programs, one was to plant trees, the other one was to plant less trees but give people in Africa and India more efficient wood burning stoves. Are any of these making a dent in the carbon emissions or is it just feel-good?

I would be willing to pay double the plane ticket price if it meant actually making a difference (sleeping better at night would also be a bonus).

What they don’t mention is that money given to offsetters is then used for activities which cause emissions, eg an off setter uses the money for transport etc. So the offset is undermined.

It's not clear (at least to me) that the UK's excessive heat this summer wasn't a key contributor to this effort going sideways.

That aside, let's not shoot the messenger. The idea is sound, the execution less so. Learn from it. Repeat better next time. If someone(s) need to be accountable fair enough. So drop the guillotine quickly and move on. We've wasted far too much time (playing politics) already.

Planting a tree too late in the spring is nearly 100% likely fatal on its own, planting it too shallowly makes it even worse. You have to give the tree time to expand its roots before summer.

Is it sound? It was reported that the forest fires this year negated all of the carbon offsets through tree planting. It might be that the effect would be even worse without the planting, but what if this is just prolonging real change that is needed? Hence greenwashing.

So imagine no tree planting. We'd be well into the negative. Yes, we need other change. But we can't have too many trees, regardless of climate change.

I already did and I asked the question: what if this is postponing real action? I imagine a world with no credits, where companies can't greenwash what they do, and instead do a meaningful change. We would be better off.

You’re precisely right and it’s not a small problem.

Overall, the focus is on emissions as “the problem” rather than “producing and burning fossil fuels” as the problem. Although subtle, it is misdirection, as it pushes our attention in the direction of the emissions problem (hence offsets etc) rather than solving the fundamental problem, which is stopping fossil fuel production.

I’ve been told that engineers spend a long time on problem definition, as it avoids creating fake solutions to fake problems. I’m not an engineer but I love them.

It's not one or the other. It's both.

Yes, we need to stop fossil fuels.

Yes, we need to clean up what we've dumped into the air.

Why is that so many see every problem as binary? When in fact it's not??

If it's both, why don't we still have both?

I don’t know. But maybe you should ask the question of the international policy community who put the entire focus on the emissions problem.

Postponing real action? We've crossed that line a quite some time ago. To now say planting tree is going to contribute to the hold up gives too many other true contributors a free pass. Yes, we've got a load of issues, with more and more piling up by the day. Let's not get distracted. Distraction has contributed more to postponing than planting trees ever will.

p.s. This problem is massive. It's global. There is no (single) silver bullet. It's going to take whatever we can do. It that's trees, so be it. I don't know anyone who believes trees are The Answer. Nor have I noticed anyone pushing such an idea. Planting trees doesn't crack the Top 100 of Greenwashing.

Tree planting in Americas/Europe hardly makes a dent in co2 capture. The real issues are elsewhere in Asia (Specifically China) and South America.

I've heard this story a few times already. Planting the trees is an easy photo-op. But actually maintaining the trees until full grown is another story.

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