ABOVE: © ISTOCK.COM, CLARKANDCOMPANY
A 2018 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that curbing global warming would require planting 1 billion hectares of additional forest. That’s a forest about the size of the United States. It may sound daunting, but according to a study published today (July 5) in Science, the planet essentially has room for the extra trees.
Not counting agricultural areas, cities, and existing forests, the globe can accommodate an additional 0.9 billion hectares of forest, the study found. That much forest area, if allowed to mature, could result in the storage of an estimated 205 gigatons of carbon, or about two-thirds of the carbon that humans have added to the atmosphere since the 1800s.
“This is by far—by thousands of times—the cheapest climate change solution,” Thomas Crowther, who led the study, tells the Associated Press, adding that it’s also the most effective solution available.
...
