Would it make sense for every and any country to plant as many trees as it could simply from a future?

Question

resource creation perspective and for employing out of work people and getting a reduction in green house gases and natural habitats as bonus'. It could be done by having banks givening low intrest loans to companies to plant the trees and that would be paid back when the trees were cut down and the area they occupied replanted?

Could the entire area that the worlds forests once covered that has been cut down that hasn't been devolped be replanted as quickly as possible?

These would be good blue collar jobs for people who have never been to college or people who need a fresh start such as people on welfare and people who have been incarcerated, and could actually replace the welfare system entirely by having people work for there pay.

by employing everyone on it, and this would also get the forests replanted when it would help out many things.

and help solve many problems at once a great amount.

Is this a profitible way to help the environment and economy at the same time?

Answer 1

Yes, it would. There are some considerations as to locations, such as avoiding directly under power lines (since the trees will grow and can be a problem when storms roll through)., but the concept is good.

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Answer 2

Planting trees is not enough. Then you have to water them. If you think there are vast areas with enough rainfall where you could just plant trees and walk away, you are wrong. If an area will naturally support trees, then they will naturally sprout there without help from people. All we have to do is not cut them down. Anyway, trees only live a few hundred years and then the die. When they die, they fall and decay, releasing all the CO2 that they absorbed during their life time back into the air. Trees don't destroy CO2 and make oxygen. They break CO2 into C and O, releasing the O into the air and making wood out of the C. So it is no permanent solution. That is unless you preserve the wood. If you cut the trees before they die and use the wood to make chairs, tables and houses, so that it is not allowed to decay, that would help some, maybe 1,000 years, if people kept 1,000 year old chairs without throwing them away. But eventually all wood decays, releasing the CO2 back into the air.

Answer 3

The only Green House Gas (GHG) that would be absorbed by trees would be carbon dioxide (CO2). This is actually one of the lowest concentrations of GHGs in the atmosphere. Since the industrial revolution in more economically developed countries, the volume of CO2 emissions has increased rapidly, due to te burning of fossil fuels.

Young trees do store a lot of carbon, and so young forests will help to reduce the ammount of CO2 int he atmosphere, but as they get older this efficieny will decrease. So mature forests would have to have constant levels of new trees in order to achieve long term and constant reduction in CO2 levels.

Burning the trees for fuel would simply release the stored carbon back into the environment, as would simply letting them decay with age, so what would happen to the older forests? Eventually the carbon is going to get back into the cycle.

There is also an argument that an increase in tree cover will cause a decrease in albedo (how much light is reflected from the earth) and so actually having a slight warming effect.

While afforestation is a recognised way of cutting CO2, it only goes so far. Cutting back on emissions, of all GHG's, not just CO2 is probably going to be the best way to reduce the future impacts of our emissions now, as recognised by agreements like the Kyoto protocol.

Answer 4

Yes it would. Unfortunately not everybody always thinks ahead. When i was in highschool we were looking for trees to be replanted (for free, just us group of kids for summer project just cause we were trying to be ecofriendly), but we were told we needed to get permits and all sorts of stupid paperwork (with fees!). We also found a golf community that wanted to give us seedlings, but they wanted to have their banner posted that they gave away the seedlings. I really wouldn't have cared much, since it's just a stupid banner of their name but all the hassle when we were just volunteering to plant more trees around our town discouraged us. We eventually just did this thing where we pick up the trash in national parks on our way up during mountain climbing (no it wasn't easy carrying bags of trash climbing up slopes and all).
And it wasn't in the US, just in case anyone wonders.

Answer 5

Hi there!

Well, Leela's answer is pretty much what you'd expect from most people and on the surface, it makes perfect sense. Unfortunately, when man and governments are involved, mix in greed, and that old radio station WIFM (that's in it for me), perfect sense goes out the window.

So now to your question....because of the explosion of modern manufacturing techniques and the absolute greed of mega-corporations to use up as much of our available resources as it can to corner as much of the availble wealth as each one can, add-in a burgeoning population, and the simple act of planting lots more trees can topple both the environment and the global economy. Here's why:

Manufacturing operations use up mega-gallons of precious fresh clean water by the hour, multiply that by the number of manufacturing operations around the world, and you have one huge fresh drinking water resource being gobbled up by the corporations. Now add to that somewhere around 8-billion people who need around 6 gallons per day, each just to stay alive (drinking, waste disposal, cleaning and cooking), and you have an even greater drain on the available fresh drinking water in the hydrosphere.

Trees require water to grow, trillions of gallons per day, to grow. Trees remove from the hydrosphere, the water they take in, making it unavailable as drinking water. Granted, there is "some" transpiration of water vapor that is returned, but by and large the greatest bulk of the water taken in to a tree removes it effectively from the hydrosphere. Now if you indiscriminantly added billions of trees to the planet, it is forseeable that the entire ecosphere could collapse in a blink of an eye. Why do I say the ecosphere could collapse? Because the mega-corporations will fight tooth and nail to keep from having to curtail their use of fresh water in its manufacturing process. So for the sake of a new washer/dryer or a refrigerator, the ecosystem will most likely collapse. Sad, but all too true.

Answer 6

I think if everyone planted trees, bushes, anything green, it would help our environment; ask your association if you can plant more bushes or trees, every one helps

Answer 7

Great idea maybe you should in some way put it out for public view. Maybe some celebrity will see your idea and back it .