Best way to save civilization? PLANT TREES

Since we are now living in what is essentially a runaway chemical reaction (too much carbon in our atmosphere) it has been my view that the only way we'll ever save civilization (not the world - the world will be fine, albeit a very different place) will be to figure out a way to suck the carbon out of the atmosphere.

I know lots of research has been done on this subject - much of it very promising. Now comes this article that says the best (and clearly easiest) way to do it is to just plant trees. Lots of them:

Best way to fight climate change? Plant a trillion trees

By Seth Borenstein July 4, 2019 Updated: July 4, 2019 4:38 p.m.

WASHINGTON — The most effective way to fight global warming is to plant lots of trees, a study says. A trillion of them, maybe more.

And there’s enough room, Swiss scientists say. Even with existing cities and farmland, there’s enough space for new trees to cover 3.5 million square miles, they reported in Thursday’s journal Science. That area is roughly the size of the United States.

The study calculated that over the decades, those new trees could suck up nearly 830 billion tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. That’s about as much carbon pollution as humans have spewed in the past 25 years.

Much of that benefit will come quickly because trees remove more carbon from the air when they are younger, the study authors said. “This is by far — by thousands of times — the cheapest climate change solution” and the most effective, said study co-author Thomas Crowther, a climate change ecologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.

Six nations with the most room for new trees are Russia, the United States, Canada, Australia, Brazil and China.

Before his research, Crowther figured that there were other more effective ways to fight climate change besides cutting emissions, such as people switching from meat-eating to vegetarianism. But, he said, tree planting is far more effective because trees take so much carbon dioxide out of the air.

Thomas Lovejoy, a George Mason University conservation biologist who wasn’t part of the study, called it “a good news story” because planting trees would also help stem the loss of biodiversity.

But planting trees is not a substitute for weaning the world off burning oil, coal and gas, the chief cause of global warming, Crowther emphasized.

Seth Borenstein is an Associated Press writer.