Scientists say that by planting a trillion trees as it is the most effective way to fight climate change, we can save our planet.
A new study published in the Science Journal, reveals that planting billions of trees around the globe can be the most effective and cheapest way to fight global warming.
Trees absorb carbon dioxide and because carbon dioxide is the main contributor to global warming, a global planting trees initiative can remove those carbon-dioxide emissions from the atmosphere that trap heat.
An initiative like this can remove nearly two-thirds of the CO2 emissions caused by the actions of the people since the beginning of the industrial revolution or approximately 25% of all CO2 in the atmosphere, according to the researchers.
The scientists used Google Earth Map to determine whether there is enough space for planting more than a trillion trees without intruding with cities and farmlands. They concluded that an area of trees as big as the USA can scrub 205 billion metric tons of carbon from the atmosphere out of the 300 billion metric tons of carbon pollution that people produced over the past 25 years.
“This is by far — by thousands of times — the cheapest climate change solution,” study co-author Thomas Crowther, a climate change ecologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, told The Associated Press. “It’s certainly a monumental challenge, which is exactly the scale of the problem of climate change,” he added.
Australia, Canada, Brazil, Russia, China, and the United States have the most space for reforestation. Jean-Francois Bastin, the lead author of the study, estimated that there is enough room for at least 1 trillion trees, and maybe even for 1.5 trillion.
Of course, this is not the only solution. We still need to stop burning gas, coal, and oil because none of this will work if we don’t stop the toxic emissions.
