Trees: Working smart

Another consideration in planting trillions of trees – ramping up propagation to meet the demand would be a huge challenge. We would also have to deal with plant diseases and consider native versus faster growing species for each location. And, if we plant too many continuous acres of trees, we could end up just releasing all that carbon again in destructive forest fires.

I recommend patches of trees, perhaps joined by greenbelts to help wild animals move around. Having a mile or two between patches helps with firefighting. It would be good to have roughly a mile or two of relatively clear land between city boundaries and wilderness as well, for the same purpose.

How much fresh water would these trees use and how would we get it to them??? That is another big consideration.

What about temperate rainforests, including temperate rainforests like the Pacific Northwest? We’ll be more intentional here because we have more resources and because growth happens a little slower in temperate zones. We don’t want to disturb old growth forests very much (and British Columbia for example is doing a great job at protecting their forest resources https://canadaslogpeople.com/about/bc-forest-facts), but forests that have already been harvested and replanted are a good place for our plans. We’re going to combine our next goal with the planting goal.

First, a tangent.

OK. Say we have met our supremely ambitious goal. The countries competed against each other in a Green Race and grew more than enough new trees in 10 years to capture 450 gigatons of carbon!!! What now? Do we leave the new forests there forever? Can we ever resume using some of that land for other purposes? If we used prairie land, shouldn’t that land ultimately be returned to it’s original form?

People underestimate just how much carbon natural prairie grass can store from ClimateOffensive

HOW DO WE KEEP THE CARBON FROM BEING RELEASED AGAIN INTO THE ATMOSPHERE?

In areas where we need to clear the land again, we’re gonna cut it down and bury it! In prairie environments it is perfectly normal to have rolling hills everywhere, so we will simply add some more there by either digging ditches and covering with dirt or by making mounds and covering with dirt.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2266747/

Dealing with stumps: They are a good basis for permaculture hugelkultur beds. We’re not going to be plowing much anymore anyway. https://www.permaculture.co.uk/articles/many-benefits-hugelkultur

Near rivers, we can cut the trees and roll them into the rivers and raft them down into the ocean. Once in open sea, I suggest we tie them together into enormous hemp rope and log rafts, then attach weights (ideally made of hempcrete, which also stores carbon) and sink them slowly to the bottom of the ocean. I believe it would take hundreds of years for them to decompose, and if we really wanted to trap the carbon then we could make underground hills out of these rafts, layer by layer, and cover them with a thick layer of hempcrete when done. (I considered skipping the trees and just growing and dumping a lot of hempcrete, but I think it would take too much human time and too much energy to be feasible. Better to just use it for weight) This would also help prevent too much interference with water quality nearby. I’d be interested in hearing some feedback about this idea from scientists. I suspect one reason I haven’t seen it suggested is maybe there was an assumption it would use too much carbon for transport, but I don’t think it would need to. Use horse and mule teams to move the downed trees to the rivers, use small gas-powered boats to corral and tie the logs once in the ocean, and I think it would be a good process once perfected and the skills are learned.

We could even use some of these to create the brand new mangrove swamps I was talking about earlier!

This process also applies to deep lakes, though we’d need to study how much is safe to put in lakes so as not to cause trouble for the fish and other inhabitants.

So, back to finding the land. We need a place where baby trees will not need more than a year of supplemental water using drip or spray irrigation. We’ll also need to create a whole lot of new jobs. Raise your hand if you’re tired of working in an office and would enjoy working in a forest all day 🙂

British Columbia has about 62 million acres available for logging. https://canadaslogpeople.com/about/bc-forest-facts We are looking for 1.5 billion acres right now. (It might be cheaper to just try to restore all the acreage in the tropical rainforests, but that might create too much of a gold rush effect, be more vulnerable to local disasters, and also let citizens in the rest of the world put it too far out of mind. Every country needs to maximize their reforesting efforts) Let’s say in Canada as a whole we find 500 million acres where we can carry out the carbon sinking (literally) program. The US could probably contribute 300 million acres to the program. Russia has 4.2 billion acres with a large amount of forest and could probably contribute 700 or 800 million acres. Boom, we just found the land with only three countries! Again, we’d want as many countries to participate as possible, but this shows how with the right amount of willpower it is possible.

Cost: It’s difficult to evaluate how much the mangrove swamps and tropical guarding projects would cost in start up and maintenance costs.

For temperate tree planting, I recently read a source that says an experienced tree planter can put in about 4000 trees per day. We’re planting about 1000 trees per acre on 1.5 billion acres, which means that if each tree planter works 9 months of the year (accounting for weather variables), then each planter can put in 720,000 trees in a year. If we wanted to get it ALL done in ONE year (not necessary, but would be nice) and labor costs for the employer were about $20 per hour, then we will be planting 1,500,000,000,000 trees and needing 2,083,333 million new workers. If we did it over 5 years, we’d create 415,000 jobs for those 5 years, many of them transitioning into maintenance or other eco-related jobs, private or public, afterward. This could even be a good option for former convicts to find jobs and start their reintegration into mainstream society, cutting down on recidivism. Total cost over either the one-year or five-year period, is about $60,000,000,000 ($60 billion). This is not small but not that big, either. It’s more difficult for me to evaluate equipment costs and tree starting costs, but we can be efficient about it and the money is there. US government’s tax revenues alone are about $3.1 trillion per year. The original plan for the California high speed rail project would have cost over $77 billion. Americans spend $29 billion a year on birdwatching and birdseed http://mentalfloss.com/article/94623/numbers-how-americans-spend-more-their-money

The money is there! This is WAY more doable than even I knew!