What problems does canada face when planting new trees, vines, plants etc?
The problem is how to calibrate a meaningful and reliable “equivalence” between the carbon sequestered permanently in fossil fuel deposits, the transient CO2 in the atmosphere, and the carbon sequestered temporarily as a result of any particular tree plantation or national tree-planting programme. No one has any idea how to do this. Nor is it likely they ever will. It is impossible to predict with the necessary certainty how much carbon any plantation project would remove from the atmosphere, and for how long. Unlike subterranean oil or coal or sea-floor carbonate, carbon stored in live or dead trees or in upper soil layers is “fragile”: it can quickly reenter the atmosphere at any time. Wildfires or human-set conflagrations often rage through plantations. Rates of decay are often difficult to anticipate, since they depend on so many shifting variables. So too are rates of respiration -the process by which trees release CO2 back into the air when they break down the sugars made during
