Planting woodlands to combat climate change
It's getting hotter : "The latest data show that this
year continues to bring record-breaking temperatures. Every
month in 2019 has ranked among the four warmest for the month in
question, and June was the warmest June ever recorded. It is now
confirmed that July was also an exceptional month."
- EU Copernicus Climate Change Service, Aug 2019.
Forests can help : "All assessed modelled pathways that
limit warming to 1.5ºC or well below 2°C require land-based
mitigation and land-use change, with most including different
combinations of reforestation, afforestation, reduced
deforestation, and bioenergy. "
-UN IPCC report on Climate Change & Land, Aug 2019.
Lots of woodland can help lots : "The planet could
support nearly 1 billion hectares of additional trees, covering
roughly the area of the US, without pushing into existing cities
or agricultural land, according to a new study in Science led by
researchers at ETH-Zürich in Switzerland. Once those trees reach
maturity, that amount of forest land could be enough to store
205 billion metric tons of carbon, about two-thirds of the
amount that humans have emitted since the Industrial Revolution,
the paper concludes."
- MIT Technology Review, Aug 2019.
Woodlands in Ireland are a great help : Although the percentage of the land surface of Ireland covered by trees has risen in recent years to c11%, this is still one of the lowest in the EU, despite the climate & soil being eminently suitable to the growth of trees. Planting native species also supports biodiversity & reverses the effects of habitat loss.
So let's plant lots more trees!