Greta Thunberg and Climate Change.

i recently came across an article in The Guardian that argued for a relatively cheap solution to climate change. The article was co authored by Ms Thunberg

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/19/greta-thunberg-we-are-ignoring-natural-climate-solutions?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Based largely on a recent article in the journal Science, the solution is reforestation of the earth on a massive scale: 2.2 billion acres and 1 trillion trees.

This solution has been discussed on several other web sites

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/07/05/global-effort-plant-trillion-trees-overwhelmingly-among-most-effective-and-cheapest

https://www.vox.com/2019/7/4/20681331/climate-change-solutions-trees-deforestation-reforestation

According to calculations, which, of course, are uncertain, given time to mature, such a reforestation would suck enough CO2 out of the atmosphere to save the world.

Unlike various useless proposals by President Obama, this would truly be a “shovel ready” project.

“Relatively cheap” means hundreds of billions of dollars to solve the problem instead the more than 10+ trillion dollars required in various versions of the Green New Deal.

Implementation problems include getting other countries to buy in.  Not only major polluters like China and India, and Germany, but many less developed countries where reforestation might have the most immediate value, like Brazil and the Congo. Unfortunately those poorer countries might not be happy to have the US or even the UN show up and invite/demand they start reforestation, even if someone else pays for it.  There would be the need to buy farmland and ranches recently hacked out of forests to be reforested.  Of course there would be a fight in the US Congress over which states will get the most advantage.

Carried to an honest to extreme to implement this pan, the lawns in front of 10s of millions of homes in the US should be torn up an replaced by trees.

Unfortunately, this cheap solution is almost certainly dead on arrival, because the powerful advocates of a Green New Deal are not looking for a inexpensive solution, they are looking for a solution that will allow them to radically remake the US economy, and “damn the costs”. Destroying the fossil fuels industries in the process.

Anyway, I am happy to see a cheaper, practical solution put forward.

I do note one obvious problem not addressed by Thunberg or in any of the discussions of this plan: buying farms and ranches for conversation to forests means higher food prices everywhere in the world. Those living in poor countries already on the edge malnutrition at current food prices, would be hurt.  They might even face starvation.

Any major government intervention into to the economy, always had external costs, sometimes “collateral damage “. Preventing the rise in food prices from leading to starvation must be part a viable reforestation plan.

 I would support a reforestation plan to fight climate change if I thought true costs were accounted for,  It could save the planet, and done carefully, it would do no harm.