Originally Posted by
Australopithecus
Interesting question. So a bit of research in the forestry tables suggests that one 20 year old pine tree has a carbon content of 1 tonne +/- 10%. That’s the equivalent of 1.8 tonnes of CO2. So to offset my year of 737 flying I have to plant 5,600 trees and wait 20 years. But first I have to plant another quarter million trees to offset just my previous flying. Well, that’s my Sunday gone...
On edit: Using the available metrics, the air transport industry would need to plant out one million acres every year.
In one state of Australia alone more than that has burned in bushfires and we are only a third of the way through fire season.
Unfortunately there won't be room to plant this many trees, in the UK, anyway, as we have to leave room for millions upon millions of new affordable homes (all built on the flood plains, as trees would get washed away).
If anything, we will need to cut down more trees to make the space, and provide building materials.
OR, we could just build them, and offset our huge carbon footprint by planting replacement trees in Scandinavia, to replace the ones imported by ship to feed our building program.
Naturally, all this will be done in a sustainable way.
"Simples".