Climate change hinders our favorite climate solution
Tree-planting, like all climate solutions, is not a silver bullet. And climate change is making everything complicated.
Save the planet. Plant a tree.
It’s an environmental effort so popular, even United States President Donald Trump is on board. Tree-planting ups property values, filters air and water, and reduces heat islands — it also helps fight climate change.
“[F]ew actions are as critical, as urgent, or as simple as planting trees,” write Christiana Figuerers and Tom Rivett-Carnac in their recent book The Future We Choose. “This ancient, carbon-absorbing technology needs no high technology, is completely safe, and is very cheap.”
Last year, one much-publicized study found that reforesting treeless land not inhabited by humans could capture more than two-thirds of human-caused greenhouse gas ever emitted (though these numbers are probably overhyped).
The problem, however, is that tree-planting, like all climate solutions, is not a silver bullet. And climate change is making everything complicated.
Old-growth forests, for example, absorb massive amounts of carbon, but a recent study found that a third of these trees died in the last century. In fact, old-growth tree fatality doubled in the last 40 years alone. Simply planting new trees isn’t going to replace these losses.
And climate disasters, such as droughts, floods, and seasonal shifts, are stressing and sometimes killing trees that don’t have enough time to recover and adapt. Trees are growing faster and dying younger, limiting their capacity to capture and store carbon, according to a study published last month.
Scientists are now doing whatever they can to save these trees.
A recent New York Times feature highlights the plight of New England trees and how a shortage of arborists are trying to incorporate climate change into their decisions. Further south, scientists are literally moving trees from Virginia to Maryland to try to save them from these stresses.
We can replant trees all we want, but if we keep spewing emissions, these problems are only going to get worse. A business-as-usual trajectory could see global potential canopy cover shrink by more than 220 million hectares by 2050 — an area larger than Mexico.
Then there’s deforestation. Recent numbers show that the Amazon is losing more than three football fields of rainforest every minute. In the U.S., the Trump administration just finalized a plan to open 9 million acres of Alaska’s Tongass National Forest to logging. The plan would lift the ban on roadless construction in national forests, put in place 20 years ago.
No reforestation pledge can survive in this environment because when trees are cut down, they not only stop sucking carbon from the air — they release all the carbon absorbed during their lifetime. It’s the environmental equivalent of taking one step forward and two steps back.
But if we stop cutting down these trees, the rest may not be as complicated. Simply letting forests regrow could capture 25% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions every year, according to a study published last month.
Tree-planting is important, but there’s a lot to consider. We must not only factor in climate change and deforestation but also geography, tree species, and ecosystems. We must rely, too, on the knowledge of indigenous peoples and local communities.
One thing, however, is clear: We must do something to combat climate change, and trees are part of that effort.