How many trees per person does it take to absorb CO2 emissions in industrialized nations?

Question

This will be different for each country, of course. As a follow-up, I wonder what about absorbing other emissions from animals and termites.

Answer 1

Trees produce enough oxygen on each acre for 18 people every day, oxygen (O2) for us to breathe. .
Trees absorb enough CO2 on each acre, over a year's time, to equal the amount you produce when you drive your car 26,000 miles. Trees remove gaseous pollutants by absorbing them through the pores in the leaf surface. Particulates are trapped and filtered by leaves, stems and twigs, and washed to the ground by rainfall.
Other emissions from animals and termites:
Trees absorb CO2 and OTHER dangerous gasses and, in turn, replenish the atmosphere with oxygen.

http://www.dnr.state.md.us/forests/publications/urban2.html

Carbon ‘offsetting’
It’s not possible to truly ‘offset’ carbon emissions, as the burning of fossil fuels releases carbon that has not been in the carbon cycle for millions of years. It is a net increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Based on a cost to Trees for Life of £5 to plant each tree, the following figures* show how much is required to plant the appropriate number of trees to absorb (over the lifetime of each tree) the CO2 produced by an individual's different methods of travel, i.e. on a 'per passenger' basis:

Air travel - Each hour produces CO2 which may be absorbed by a quarter of a tree = £1.25
e.g. for 5 hours of air travel, the cost of planting trees to help reduce the impact of the CO2 emissions is 5 x £1.25 = £6.25.
Car travel - Each 1,000 kms. produces CO2 which may be absorbed by a half of a tree = £2.50
e.g. if you travel 10,000 km. in your car in a year, the cost of planting trees to help reduce the impact of the CO2 emissions is 10 x £2.50 = £25
Train/Coach travel - Each 1,000 kms. produces CO2 which may be absorbed by a tenth of a tree = £0.50

http://www.treesforlife.org.uk/tfl.global_warming.html

Answer 2

All of them.

They cannot keep up to emmissions that is why they are dying from the tops down everywhere, here and there mostly.

Spruce budd worm

pine beetle

its all a mercy killing

The trees can't breathe any more their stomata are full of crap they can't digest so they die inside and the bugs help them to feed their children with their souls and nutrients.

Please don't spray poison on the bugs

Let them do their job, it's up to us now more and more to kleen the air for the trees with our lungs as our number grow and the trees dwindle.

Get those bunker burning tankers off all the coasts and the the trees will get better faster.

Why can't those monster ships be covered with solar panels to provide electricity for the cities they pollute? Eh?

Answer 3

Difficult to calculate.
Most of the oxygen is produced by microscopic algae in the oceans. They also are in danger because of oil spills.
But I would say that we should stop wild fires and plant as many trees as possible. The sooner the better.
One efficient, quick, cost effective way of replanting thousands of trees could be from the air.
Seeds and plantlets grown in bio-degradable special conic shape vessels which penetrate the soil when launched from airplanes and helicopters could do the job.
Such technique should be tested and refined experimentally in order to optimize the variables (vessels shape, launching altitude vs. percentage of successful plants..) with regards to the type of soils, etc.
An additional advantage is the random mixture of plants that can be obtained, without the unnatural regularity of the forests planted with conventional techniques.

Answer 4

I would think thousands, but as others have said, there are too many variables to really know. Basically you need to grow as many pounds of wood as the pounds of coal, oil and gas that you burn. So it isn't the number of trees, it is the number of pounds added each year to the trees as they grow. And it isn't really pounds of wood compared to pounds of coal, oil and gas, it is pounds of carbon in the wood compared to pounds of carbon in the coal, oil and gas. But a rough approximation just comparing the weights of the wood and oil directly should be good enough.

By the way, it is believed that most CO2 is absorbed by algae in the sea and not trees or any other land plants.

Oooohh! Good answer werehunter! Good links too.

Answer 5

too many varibles what kind of tree how old. what just the individual puts out in CO2 or including what he uses (other buildings, the coffee cup... its one big problem)