Want to save the planet? Why not grow more trees?
From the Arbor Day Foundation website:
The US government through the USDA reserve programs shell out $2 billion annually for farmers to NOT grow crops over 24 million acres of US farmland. With much of that farmland instead resting under permanent ground cover.
Why not instead pay farmers to plant trees in those reserve farmlands? Lots of trees, trees that will consume and store the carbon and return oxygen to the air. Managed and maintained tree forest that won't be consumed by forest fires due to neglect. Trees that when mature can be harvested and used in a way that retains their carbon.
Our climate change is in part about the balance between things that put carbon into the air and things that take carbon out of the air.
As trees grow, they help stop climate change by removing carbon dioxide from the air, storing carbon in the trees and soil, and releasing oxygen into the atmosphere. Trees provide many benefits to us, every day.
The US government through the USDA reserve programs shell out $2 billion annually for farmers to NOT grow crops over 24 million acres of US farmland. With much of that farmland instead resting under permanent ground cover.
Why not instead pay farmers to plant trees in those reserve farmlands? Lots of trees, trees that will consume and store the carbon and return oxygen to the air. Managed and maintained tree forest that won't be consumed by forest fires due to neglect. Trees that when mature can be harvested and used in a way that retains their carbon.
Our climate change is in part about the balance between things that put carbon into the air and things that take carbon out of the air.
80-89, M
