JUN 01, 2017

Even Planting Trees Won't Help Us Rid Earth of Excess CO2

WRITTEN BY: Anthony Bouchard

You've probably heard that by planning more trees on Earth, we can help transform a lot of the atmosphere's carbon dioxide into breathable oxygen and reduce the impact of global warming.

While that's sort of true, scientists are now saying that there's so much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere today that even planting tons of trees isn't going to help us get rid of all the excess greenhouse gas we've accumulated from our lifestyles.

Unfortunately, there just isn't enough surface area on the Earth itself to plant the number of trees necessary for sustaining the removal of unwanted carbon dioxide. As a result, planting trees really won't help prevent the global temperature from rising up to 3.6ยบ Fahrenheit.

This temperature increase leads to a domino effect of other dangerous problems, including but not limited to drought, heavier storms, and wildfires.

That's not to say that planting tons of trees won't help, but it won't completely eliminate the problem. To do that, we would need to change our lifestyle completely by eliminating CO2 emissions.

It's an ongoing battle, but things are only getting more difficult as human populations continue to increase and take up valuable space that could be used for planting trees.