Will planting trees get us out of our climate pickle? Not entirely. But it could increase the world’s natural drawdown of atmospheric carbon by 25%.
Most mornings when I get up I check the weather. I’d like to know what it will be doing so I can plan my day around that.
Even after all these years of observing patterns, I am often surprised. I will walk out on my deck and look at the mercury and it reads ten or fifteen degrees below what my Apple Watch tells me the temperature should be. The watch gets its data from a local weather sensor, likely somewhere near the Post Office in town. The thermometer on my deck is reading its temperature 20 feet above ground in an oak forest.
Inside, during the heat of the day, the air will be ten degrees below even the forest because I have a living roof and the green mossy cover works exactly the same way a refrigerator does, dropping coolth into the enclosure as overnight dew is wicked and evaporated.
Transpiration is one of the cooling effects of a forest. So is photosynthesis. A single oak tree may have one million leaves and a solar collecting area of two acres. Using sunlight for energy, it draws carbon dioxide from the sky, reserves the carbon and sends the oxygen back. We are all told as children that this is a reciprocity arrangement we have with plants because…