Planting trees is a terrible way to mitigate the release of CO2 into the atmosphere[1].
There are many problems (most of which are covered in that article), and they include:
- mature forests are generally carbon-neutral and can also sometimes become carbon emitters, depending on specific circumstances
- young forests sequester carbon more quickly, but the trees just aren't that big and the amount of carbon sequestered is trivial
- as trees die, they release much of the captured carbon back into the atmosphere as they decay
- planting new forests is much more expensive (in terms of time, energy, and money) than just sequestering carbon when it's produced or, better yet, not using fossil fuels as much as we have in the past
Mature forests are not carbon-neutral. In the US the forests absorb about 12% of the greenhouse gas emissions [1]. Can this number go to 20%, for example? I think so. A trivial legislative change would be to stop the subsidies for ethanol, and to offer them instead to plant forests on the acreage currently used for its feedstock corn. That would be about 30 million acres. At a reasonable 15 tons of CO2 absorbed per year, that would be 450 megatons CO2 per year, or about 7% of the US emissions, so that would bring us to 19%. But more is possible.
Can we reach a point where the trees absorb 100% of the emissions (without reducing the emissions)? I don't think so. And I think it's wrong to attempt that. But trees can have a very meaningful impact, we should not dismiss them so cavalierly.
There are many problems (most of which are covered in that article), and they include:
- mature forests are generally carbon-neutral and can also sometimes become carbon emitters, depending on specific circumstances
- young forests sequester carbon more quickly, but the trees just aren't that big and the amount of carbon sequestered is trivial
- as trees die, they release much of the captured carbon back into the atmosphere as they decay
- planting new forests is much more expensive (in terms of time, energy, and money) than just sequestering carbon when it's produced or, better yet, not using fossil fuels as much as we have in the past
1. https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/why-dont-we-just-plant-lot-t...