3. Blood transfusion – using trees
GOAL 3: Blood transfusion. Figure out enough ways to trap and store carbon from the atmosphere to reverse at least half of the total damage since the start of the Industrial Revolution (1760) and do it in only 10 years!
What is the damage?
According to
Doha infographic gets the numbers wrong, underestimates human emissionssince the Industrial Revolution began humans have emitted about 1734 gigatons (a gigaton is 1,000,000,000 metric tons or 2,200,000,000,000 lbs) of carbon into the atmosphere. About half of that has been absorbed by the planet itself, but the rest is still up there, heating us up.
In other words, there are about 867 x 2,200,000,000,000 lbs of EXTRA carbon in the atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Revolution. The big problem with thinking we can invent some magical technology to reabsorb it is, where do we get the energy to DO that without releasing MORE carbon? We can hope for a sudden Magic Device that will Fix Everything, but let’s assume we need to focus on two things – release less carbon and absorb more using the natural carbon storage mechanisms available to us.
So, let’s round up the 867 gigatons to 900 gigatons by 2020. We want to trap and store half of that, or 450 x 2,200,000,000,000 lbs of carbon, from the atmosphere in the next TEN YEARS. It’s an audacious goal, that’s for sure!
Let’s say one acre of properly managed newish forest can absorb 13.6 metric tons (30,000 lbs) of carbon per year. To absorb 1 gigaton of carbon you need at least 73,333,333 acres of forest. We have about 15 billion acres of habitable land available to use – land that is not mountainous or pure desert.
A little less than 5 billion of that is in cropland globally right now.
New map shows 4.62 billion acres of cropland globally
Much of the rest is wilderness and we should be careful about rushing to disturb natural ecosystems just to plant “more efficient” carbon sinks. Still, we can find the land! The water is a separate challenge.
If we planted 3,299,999,985 acres of trees tomorrow, they could absorb 45 gigatons a year, or 450 gigatons over the next 10 years – this is not quite accurate, of course, as amounts trapped change with age of the trees. We are going for very rough math, though.
As with some managed firewood stands, we would start these acres with perhaps 1000 trees per acre and then as they increase we keep thinning them each year to give more room for the remaining ones to grow, ending up with 50-200 trees per acre. Thus a great deal of carbon is being stored each year from the very start.
A lot of these trees could be planted on farmland in permaculture type/renerative agriculture, but I think another good place to find land for these trees is in cities. Generally speaking, city land is polluted with heavy metals and plastics and there is often insufficient sunlight to grow many food crops. Plus, most people would rather buy than grow their food. Meanwhile, city climates can use the moderation that trees bring. Trees both warm up cold cities in winter (by decreasing freezing winds) and cool off hot cities in summer (by shading and releasing water vapor). They also look beautiful, provide habitats, and make us humans feel more relaxed.
A recent study showed that achieving 40% tree cover on a city block can lower that block’s summer temperatures by 5 to 10 degrees compared to surrounding blocks. https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/climate-weather/blogs/trees-are-not-so-secret-weapon-keeping-our-cities-cool
Let’s split the difference between some studies https://www.newgeography.com/content/001689-how-much-world-covered-cities and say that at least 2% of the planet is covered in human homes, office buildings, factories, and roads. 2% of 36,677,592,320 is 733,551,846 acres of land. If we fill in more trees on 20% of that it will add 146,710,369 acres to our goal. Now we just need to plant another 3,153,289,616 acres.