Anping chen colorado state university

A tree planting day was a public holiday until just 10 years ago in South Korea. On that day, it was always on TV that politicians were campaigning for planting trees. The government encouraged people to plant trees to fight against climate change and gave them saplings for free. Planting trees has been considered a very important task and promoted as a way to be safe from climate change problems. In the article, “Opinion: Want to Stop Climate Change? Start by Planting a Trillion Trees,” Kathleen Parker argues that planting trees is the simplest, most effective, and most economical way to fight climate change. Is it really realistic and worthwhile? I do not think so at all. I argue that planting trees is not a feasible and valuable way to fight climate change for some reasons.

First of all, planting trees is not as effective as we expect. According to the article “Climate change: Planting new forests 'can do more harm than good'” by Matt McGrath, Dr. Anping Chen’s research team at Colorado State University measured carbon density in northern China, where tree planting is actively underway, to see how much carbon the new forest absorbs. Surprisingly, it has been shown that trees planted in low-carbon soil have excellent carbon absorption capabilities, but the ones in high-carbon soil do not have carbon absorption capabilities as much as we expect. Many trees currently being planted in contaminated soil might not work properly. The carbon absorption effects of trees and our expectations for that are much exaggerated.

Secondly, planting trees could be harmful to nature. It is impossible to select and plant trees that exactly fit the area. Because nature is so complexly connected, we do not know how the trees we plant will adversely affect the local ecosystem. In nature, plants compete with each other to survive. The trees we plant may threaten the existence of existing native plants. Furthermore, the diversity of ecosystem is being destroyed. For example, there is “Bonn Challenge”. This is a tree planting campaign involving more than 40 countries, aiming to restore 350 million hectares of forest by 2030. 80% of the trees planted through this campaign are from the same species.

Thirdly, it costs too much to plant a tree. It is much more efficient to use the money to develop eco-friendly energy. When trees are planted, it takes time to grow and form a forest. It will take 20 years for the trees planted now to become forests. That means that the current effort will be effective in 20 years. On the other hand, eco-friendly energy such as solar and wind power system has the effect of reducing carbon dioxide immediately by reducing the use of fossil fuels. If we use the money for the eco-friendly energy subsidy, it can have an immediate effect. We cannot wait 20 years. We should remember that even at this moment the problem of climate change is getting worse quickly.