Steve Green: We need carbon gobbling trees

 

STEVE GREEN

Facts: 50 per cent of the world’s tropical forests have now been cleared, and every year about 12 million more hectares are lost; Humans have cut down 3 billion trees; Ethiopia, having diminished its forest cover to a mere 4 per cent of its territory planted 350 million trees at 1000 sites across the country, mostly in one day.

In New Zealand’s quest to become carbon neutral by 2050, our planting and management of trees is both a huge challenge and opportunity. Why? Simply that trees are ‘carbon gobblers’ – sequestration, to give its proper name – restricting the amount of carbon dioxide emissions reaching our atmosphere. Trees are great!

We Kiwis are responsible for generating around 80 Mt CO2e of harmful emissions annually. Trees gobble up around 30 per cent of our emissions, resulting in our ‘net emissions’ reducing to 56 Mt CO2e. Our emissions have increased over recent years by rapid increases in our population, dairy and cattle, road transport, home energy, and by the harvesting of timber from our plantation forests, mainly to accommodate additional dairy farms or to make way for luxury golf courses.

So, we are striving to reduce the quantity of nasty fossil fuel emis-sions and increase the number of carbon gobbling trees. It’s that simple.

We must plant more trees, both natives and exotics. Both are needed. Exotic trees, especially pinus radiata, dominate our valuable timber industry – exporting logs, timber for construction, paper for toilet rolls, and materials for biofuels. Sadly, when they are harvested, they release their stored carbon dioxide and can no longer prevent these escaping into the atmosphere. We must ensure that the number of exotics is always increasing.

Natives take far longer to reach maturity, and gobble less carbons than exotics, but they can survive for centuries. They are our future.

Back in 2018 the Government introduced the programme for one billion trees to be planted by 2028, and allocated $240 million of our taxes. This assumed that 500 million will be planted by commercial foresters and 500 million, mostly natives, matched by com-munity projects using this fund.

Ten thousand native trees will soon be planted in Mangawhai Park. This Council initiative is well underway with planting to start once the weather conditions are suitable. The replanting of Man-gawhai Park should be a wonderful local project.

But what can you per-sonally do? If you have the land, plant trees! Every tree helps. If you do not have any land there is a wonderful way to help New Zealand – join Trees That Count. This Kiwi charity is web-based and gives all of us the opportunity to simply gift a tree to a friend. In-stead of sending a card to acknowledge a birthday, Christmas, achievement, or simply to say “thank you”, buy them a tree. They will receive a won-derful eCard containing your personal message, and also details of the project that the tree will be allocated to. Very simple and highly professional. Volume discounts are available and the cost of one individual tree is only $10 tax deductible. So, for the price of a slice of cake at your favourite cafe you can buy a native tree that will be professionally planted, grow for centuries and constantly be looking for nasty carbons to gobble. To check them out visit treesthatcount.co.nz. 

Beyond 2050 we will still be producing nasty emissions! We will still be using petrol for some vehicles and ride-on mowers. We will still have cows burping. We will still be processing waste in landfills. We will still be using fertilis-ers. How many of those harmful Mt CO2e will they produce? No idea. Currently our trees gob-ble around 24 Mt CO2e annually. Therefore by 2050 we need to hugely reduce our gross emis-sions from 80MtCO2e. A truly massive chal-lenge, but made easier with every additional tree working for us.

The one thing that every Kiwi, that’s you, can undertake, is sim-ply to protect our native forests and keep plant-ing trees. If Ethiopia can achieve this in one day, think what we can do over the next 30 years!

Steve Green, Mangawhai’s ‘computer chap’, has been retired here for 12 years hav-ing previously lived and worked in London, New York and Auckland. He welcomes your feedback at theclimatechap@gmail.com if you have any climate questions, recommendations or concerns to raise.