this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2024
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A tree absorbs about 25 kg of CO2 per year. A human breathes out about 250 kg of CO2 per year.
Trees are great, but not all that efficient. To deal with the amount of CO2 humanity is currently producing, we'd need a whole lot more of them.
Luckily for us it's not just trees though of course. there's like 400 something trees per person though and many other plants and organisms that also help as carbon sinks. Grasses and other plants cover the ground and sink tons of CO2. It's pretty cool to look up how much CO2 capture per different organisms like an acre of grass etc.
Yeah, nature is great. If all it had to handle were billions of people breathing we'd have no issues.
The problem is that modern machines are extremely efficient at dumping CO2 into the atmosphere, but as great as trees are, they're not all that efficient at removing it. So, if we want to keep CO2 at survivable levels, we either need fewer CO2-emitting machines (ideal) or a machine that takes CO2 out of the atmosphere (so far, impossible at scale). Simply relying on trees isn't going to cut it.