Scientists Identify How Many Trees to Plant and Where to Stop Climate Crisis
Never mind the fact it takes trees decades to get to their maximum annual CO2 uptake levels and that species vary wildly in the levels of CO2 they take up...<p>Planting trees isn&#x27;t the answer, drastically reducing emissions <i>immediately</i>, drastically reducing construction levels (creating concrete is a huge source of CO2), cessation of paving over square mile after square mile of soil to create roads and housing additions, ceasing the practice of removing all of the top soil from ecologically diverse fields to sell and then throwing Kentucky blue grass sod down and putting up cookie-cutter houses, ceasing coastal fishing that has been damaging kelp and seaweed &#x27;forests&#x27; and actively repopulating them via sustainable farming of kelp and seaweed which will drastically increase local marine species populations over time.<p>Hell, abandoning foolish technologies like cryptocurrency will have IMMEDIATE impact. Bitcoin alone uses an insane amount of electricity. One estimate [1] puts a single bitcoin transaction at using as much electricity as it takes to stream 48,011 hours of YouTube which is nearly 21 days of average U.S. household electricity usage! The network has had an annualized carbon footprint equal to Denmark and an electricity consumption equal to Austria. For imaginary flippin&#x27; internet money that is largely used for speculation, ransomware and illicit drug trade!!!<p>Yes, replacing the forests we&#x27;ve cut down in the past several centuries is imperative but it isn&#x27;t a solution. You can plant all the trees you want but as long as you&#x27;re producing nearly 40 gigatons of CO2 a year, you&#x27;re just making yourself feel good and getting some PR for your company&#x2F;party&#x2F;country.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;digiconomist.net&#x2F;bitcoin-energy-consumption" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;digiconomist.net&#x2F;bitcoin-energy-consumption</a>