In a warming world, New England’s trees are storing more carbon
For the people here promoting planting more trees and new technology as a solution, have you seriously considered:<p>1) How many existing forests we wouldn&#x27;t have to cut down if we transitioned away from meat &amp; dairy ?<p>2) How much extra space that would also give us to plant more trees?<p>3) How much green house gas are from animal farming in the first place?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ourworldindata.org&#x2F;agricultural-land-by-global-diets" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ourworldindata.org&#x2F;agricultural-land-by-global-diets</a>:<p>- There&#x27;s 104 million km^2 of habitable land on earth<p>- 40 million km^2 goes to meat &amp; dairy (includes grazing land + land used for crops for animal feed)<p>- 11 million km^2 goes to plants to feed humans<p>- 83% of the global calorie supply for humans comes from plants vs 18% from meat (i.e. meat is very inefficient)<p>- Demand for meat is going to continue going up so deforestation is going to keep going up: &quot;As we get richer, our diets tend to diversify and per capita meat consumption rises; economic development unfortunately exerts an increasing impact on land resources. If we want per capita meat consumption to be able to rise sustainably at lower incomes, per capita meat consumption at high incomes will have to decrease.&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Environmental_impact_of_meat_production" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Environmental_impact_of_meat_p...</a>:<p>&gt; the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has estimated that agriculture (including not only livestock, but also food crop, biofuel and other production) accounted for about 10 to 12 percent of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (expressed as 100-year carbon dioxide equivalents) in 2005[58] and in 2010.[59]<p>Planting trees and new technology might buy us some time, but if our idealised lifestyle is fundamentally unsustainable, we&#x27;ll be back in the same situation again soon enough. I feel this uncomfortable truth is ignored by well meaning people. Waiting for lab grown meat isn&#x27;t a realistic option either.