The earth’s warming is unprecedented in recent geologic history. Decades of research from climate scientists and policy reforms from world leaders have not been enough to stop the abrupt warming of the planet. The Kyoto Protocol, where 38 countries failed to meet their targets, and the Paris Agreement, which might not meet its goal to hold the rise in global temperature below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, might not be enough in saving our planet (Maizland, 2021). With only 150 years of data and an enormous uncertainty of the future, the solution to climate change could be more complicated than the problem itself.
The Paris Climate Agreement was one of the few revolutionary climate conventions that aimed to limit global warming. It vowed to restore 344 million hectares of forests and considered planting trees viable to mitigate climate change (Frost,2020). However, some research suggests that forests have warming effects and many more-complex and uncertain climate impacts (Popkin, 2019).
One problem with trees is that forested land surfaces are darker than most land with grass or snow. Since dark surfaces absorb more heat, a land filled with trees will trap a lot of the heat from the Sun and increase the local temperature of a place. As a result, in some regions, specifically with snow, planting more trees could result in net warming (Marshall, 2020).
An analysis of the amount of carbon dioxide sequestered by a tree on dailykos.com states that planting one trillion trees overnight can only be half of the present human emissions (Holloway, 2019). Considering the world has about 3.04 trillion trees right now, planting a trillion trees would be an ambitious project that would not be significant to stop global warming over the long term.
Droughts and land degradation are consequences of global warming. One of the countries severely affected by this problem is China, where 27.4 percent of its land is desertified land (Petri, 2017). To combat its expanding deserts, China implemented the Three-North Shelterbelt Project to plant millions of trees along the 2800 mile border of the northern encroaching desert (Petri, 2017).
On the other hand, research in 2016 has shown that the new ecosystems formed as a result of the Three-North Shelterbelt Project- planting millions of trees along the 2800 mile border of the northern encroaching desert in China (Petri, 2017)- absorb the water from rainfall and reduce the amount that ends up in the rivers. Furthermore, scientists are worried that planting more trees could further worsen water scarcity and worsen the droughts in China (Zastrow, 2019).
I am, by no means, suggesting stopping efforts to combat deforestation, but trees can only help us slow climate change; they can’t reverse climate change by themselves. Regions like the Adirondack are crucial in absorbing carbon dioxide and slowing the earth’s warming. However, the climate will keep changing for decades, which could also affect patterns of tree growth. Instead of relying on these carbon sinks, our goals should stop emitting the primary sources of greenhouse gases. Trees can be a stopgap until countries transition from fossil fuels and other sources of greenhouse gases to greener, reliable alternatives. Climate change is a problem of the modern world, and the solutions proposed today could have repercussions over the long term.
Citations:
Maizland, Lindsay. “Global Climate Agreements: Successes and Failures.” Council on Foreign Relations, 21 Nov. 2017, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/paris-global-climate-change-agreements.
Popkin, Gabriel. How Much Can Forests Fight Climate Change? 15 Jan. 2019, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00122-z.
Marshall, Michael. Planting Trees Doesn’t Always Help with Climate Change. 26 May 2020, https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200521-planting-trees-doesnt-always-help-with-climate-change.
Holloway, R. “About That Climate-Mitigation/Tree-Planting Study That Seems Too Good to Be True…” Daily Kos, 6 July 2019, https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/7/6/1869929/-About-that-climate-mitigation-tree-planting-study-that-seems-too-good-to-be-true.
Petri, Alexandra E. “China’s ‘Great Green Wall’ Fights Expanding Desert.” National Geographic, 4 May 2021, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/china-great-green-wall-gobi-tengger-desertification.
Zastrow, Mark. “China’s Tree-Planting Drive Could Falter in a Warming World.” Nature News, Nature Publishing Group, 23 Sept. 2019, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02789-w#ref-CR5.