Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

permaculture - [permaculture] Are carbon offsets from tree-planting nonsense?

permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: permaculture

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Rain Tenaqiya <raincascadia@yahoo.com>
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [permaculture] Are carbon offsets from tree-planting nonsense?
  • Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 10:47:11 -0700 (PDT)

I have always thought that the practice of carbon offsets for polluters was
problematic, for many reasons. But if what Toby was saying about the
neglible impact of tree-cutting on global warming is true, then all those
carbon offset offers that are starting to pop up everywhere are total
bullshit. You can now pay some person in a poor country to plant a bunch of
trees to supposedly make up for your greedy little plane trip vacation. It
would only cost me $40 a year to pay for all the carbon I currently emit,
according to one web site (I think it is part of green.yahoo.com). In any
case, trees do sequester carbon dioxide, and that carbon stays locked up
until the tree decays. So for land that has space for trees, planting trees
could remove some of the carbon dioxide emitted through burning fossil fuels,
at least temporarily. Keeping the land in permanent forest would permanently
decrease the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. This was part of Robert
Hart's hope, in
his effort to promote forest gardens. The question is, how much carbon can
be held by trees relative to the amount that is being released from burning
fossil fuels. If I'm hearing Toby correctly, the amount of carbon released
from burning fossil fuels is so huge, that it totally dwarfs the amount that
trees could hold, even if all forests were restored. I do believe this is
what a recent report on the destruction of the Amazon rainforest concluded,
as well.


Rain


---------------------------------
Building a website is a piece of cake.
Yahoo! Small Business gives you all the tools to get online.




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page