CAN PLANTING TREES SAVE THE PLANET?
As Politicians and companies rush to assuage their air-mile guilt by planting trees, Ray Harrington-Vail argues such headline-grabbing good intentions are misplaced.
Carbon offsetting was last year’s buzz phrase. In offering easy green credibility to individuals and businesses, it seemed to offer an easy way of buying public approval without requiring inconvenient sacrifices – such as cutting down on travel.
But can planting trees really help negate are extravagant planet-damaging ways? The only people who really seem to think this can help are those who are selling the trees.
Planting to neutralise carbon emissions has become a big business: £60m worth of trees have been bought in 2007 up from £20m in 2005. By 2010 the market is expected to reach £300m.
Trees, carrots . . . any vegetation certainly absorbs carbon as it grows but this will soon be released when the plant dies, is eaten or burnt. Most trees do not live to a majestic old age, the majority succumb to disease or predation in their early years. Thus to do any good, those that are currently being planted to absorb our emissions would have to grow very quickly and then be sunk into the deepest ocean where they could not decay. Alternatively they could be stored where they could not rot such as used as a building material.
Ray Harrington-Vail is general manager of the Isle of Wight’s Footprint Trust.