How much carbon do those rotting waste products from land clearing actually produce?
If you look at a tree, and get rid of the water in it, half of the dry weight of the tree is carbon. If you think about how large the atmosphere is and how much carbon dioxide it can hold, there is actually just as much [additional] carbon in the vegetation of the earth. There’s twice as much [again] being held in the soils of the earth, which is released when land is cleared for farming.
