One trillion trees to save the planet ? - Redefining Energy podcast

Turning Biodiversity, Carbon Sequestration and Forestry into a financial asset is quite complex

Even framing it this way is fascinating-- I'd long thought the efforts to reforest land and tap into the real power of trees was more of a governmental role and not one controlled by typical financial mechanisms, but obviously that's a naive view of it all. Thanks for sharing, Laurent!

Laurent, the first step is not to plant new trees, but to stop cutting them down. You'll never be able to replace biomass as fast as it's being burned.

U.S. Forests Are Being Clear-Cut to Supply Biomass Energy Industry, Report Finds

"Forests in the U.S. Southeast are being devastated by demand for wood pellets to power biomass energy plants in Europe and Japan, according to a new report by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Dogwood Alliance, and the Southern Environmental Law Center.

According to the report, mature, native hardwood forests in places like North Carolina, Virginia, and along the Gulf Coast are being clear-cut, with whole treesand other large-diameter wood then trucked to processing mills run by Enviva, the world’s largest wood pellet producer. These pellets, the report said, are then being shipped to power plants such as Drax Power Station in the United Kingdom, Ørsted biomass facilities in Denmark, and increasingly to generating stations in Japan. Forests in the U.S. Southeast are being logged at four times the rate as those in the Amazon, according to the UN’s biodiversity report released last month."

As many suspected all along, the last thing the Sustainability Industry wants is sustainability - there's no money in it.

I wish I had time for all the lectures offered by all the experts. The Minnesota Agricultural Utilization Research Institute has some wonderful meetings regarding this subject I should attend. But I'm far too busy keeping trees from growing into or crashing on to my very modest house.

If you have water, sunlight, a few nutrients, and warmth, you get biomass. Period. CO2 will find it. Animal life will follow, period.

Some people plant corn and beans and call themselves farmers. Some plant milkweed and give monarch butterflies a chance (or many, many other life friendly efforts).

All your accounting statistics mean nothing to me. Quantum photochemistry means the world to me. I'm glad there are others much more skilled than me at the Stanford University Center for Quantum Molecular Design (etc.) changing the bioenergy / carbon sequestration options.