Click below to listen to my 2 min. Garden Bite radio show/podcast: Should we plant more trees or not?
Is planting trees enough to reverse climate change? Short answer: no.
Last week I re-aired Garden Bites from last year as I was on vacation. One of those was titled a Change of Climate for gardening and I talked about the various ways to help our planet including planting trees.
My arborist friend, Faith Appelquist of Treequality, came out with another awesome article regarding that very thing. She got a little irked about how promotions are overeager in their protestations that planting a tree will solve climate change. She said, and I quote, These over zealous promotional examples show that people are not necessarily “carbon literate”, but rather “green” conscious when it comes to trees and carbon.
This is a case where we only get PART of the story. While trees can sequester SOME carbon, they are not the only answer. Faith shares, “although we often hear about tree planting campaigns as a solution to climate change, this can put too great an expectation on trees and those that manage them. No city can adequately compensate for the carbon output of the town or city in which it grows. Importantly, urban trees can mitigate climate change problems locally, but they cannot meaningfully contribute to lowering the current rate of climate change”.
She adds: Trees have many benefits but carbon storage is one of the lowest. We plant and care for trees for so many other reasons, such as shade, air quality, property values, and aesthetic beauty.
However, it helps to realize that to make a meaningful contribution to addressing climate change, we need to be talking about planting extensive forests in regions of the world where this is viable, and stop cutting down the many intact forests we already have. There is simply not enough land on earth to tackle climate change with trees alone.
That’s not to say we shouldn’t plant trees, only that we cannot expect them to be the ONLY answer!