Picture
1 illustrates the effort (energy) required in the pre-planting
stage. Picture 2 illustrates an area of newly planted “woodland”.
The trees are 5 years old and are, on average, 60inches in
height. As ‘standard’ trees they have a single
stem from which branches will grow. Each tree, after 5 year’s
growth, has, on average, fewer than 50 leaves. For the purpose
of carbon offset projects, these trees will stand for 99 years:
this means that they cannot be touched for that period of
time – the planter owns the carbon! Picture 3 is the
outcome.
The National Assessment of UK Forestry and Climate Change
Steering Group 2009 is suggesting to Government that we, as
a nation, should plant 2.2million acres of tree-filled plastic
tubes over the next 40 years in order to increase the carbon-capture
potential of our forest resource to 10% of total annual greenhouse
gas emissions by 2050.
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You’ve read Dr. Rackham’s opinion earlier. Planting
trees in the UK should be seen as the very last resort to
combating climate change.
Asking others in poorer countries to give up their land rights
for foreign-owned tree planting schemes (colonialism?), to
appease our carbon-guilt, is an abuse of human rights, and
should be stopped in international courts.
The idea is simple enough:
we pay someone else, somewhere else, to cover their land with
trees, and they will soak up the carbon dioxide released through
the emissions from our bargain flight to the sun or that big
corporate conference.
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