Is Planting Trees Helpful?
Not really. Unless you grow a lot of them. Like 1.7 Trillion of them. Yes, that’s trillion, not billion.
Of course trees are good for our soul and spiritual harmony.
So planting a tree is good.
Trees convert water (H2O) and carbon dioxide (CO2) to sucrose and oxygen.
Carbon dioxide causes global warming, and that’s likely to be really bad for us, many many other creatures, and the biosphere of planet Earth as a whole.
So trees are good because they reduce CO2 levels and reduce global warming.
A little.
Effectively they are what are known as carbon sinks.
There used to be a time when vast forests girdled the Earth. All those Brother Grimm stories about wolves and Little Red Riding Hood etc. are about when most of Europe was still mostly covered in huge forests. About 80% of these forests have now been cut down.
Link. Check out the forest maps on pages 9 or 10.
To offset the current CO2 levels and global emissions with trees would require about 1,700,000,000,000 extra trees to be grown. Basically - replace most of the global forests that have been cut down over the last five centuries.
And replace all the trees that are still being destroyed in places like the Amazon Rainforests.
Which means that all those trees that were cut down to make farm land, would now once again cover about 60% of all good farm land.
It means everyone on Earth who is physically able would need to plant one tree every single day for the next 60 odd years.
And we can’t feed 8 billion people with only 40% of the farm land.
Which is why reducing Carbon Dioxide emissions makes more sense than simply planting trees.
Of course, it’s not quite that simple either. Trees tend to grow taller and faster in the tropics than in the cooler climates. What you plant and where you plant it makes a big difference.
And you can’t replace the carbon sinks of oil and coal that were built up over millions of years with planting trees over fifty years.
But planting trees is generally good. Perhaps not particularly helpful, but certainly good.
Hope these thoughts help.