Climate in crisis: Can these trees really save the Earth?
Copyright 2000 Guardian Newspapers Limited,
The Observer
November 26, 2000
Establishing plantations of young trees is one way of creating a 'carbon sink' as part of attempts to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere rather than contribute to it. America wanted to include a large contribution of sinks in the total, so that it would not have to reduce the amount of fossil fuels that it was burning. In other words, it wanted to grow trees rather than cut down on car use.
Environmentalists are opposed to carbon sinks because there are huge uncertainties about the amount of carbon that forests really absorb. Also a plantation of fast-growing pine trees absorbs far more carbon dioxide than a mature forest. That would mean that including forests in the total would encourage countries to cut down old forests such as rainforests and replace them with monoculture plantations.
Europe was opposed to the American proposal on carbon sinks because the Americans wanted to be allowed to claim credit for so much carbon being absorbed by its forests, that it would have allowed them to increase their emissions of greenhouse gases by 8 per cent rather than cutting them by 7 per cent as they had promised under Kyoto. If this formula were accepted, it would have meant that Sweden and Finland would be allowed to increase their fossil fuel emissions by up to 40 per cent. European countries were opposed to this because it would have undone the hard-won agreement at Kyoto to cut the emission of greenhouse gases.