Ireland needs to be planting somewhere between 8,000 to 20,000 ha per year, along with carbon emission reductions to make its targets in 2030 and to reach net zero in 2050.
Ireland needs to be planting somewhere between 8,000 to 20,000 ha per year, along with carbon emission reductions to make its targets in 2030 and to reach net zero in 2050.
29 comments
What’s that in robot trees?
They need to get farmers to stop removing the hedges is the first move and then to get them to grow more hedges. It will help carbon removal as well as the wild life like birds to nest in. I have seen them removing hedges to put wire fences up which is as far as I know not allowed but I could be wrong.
Can’t – we need all the land for 🏡
Trees only account for about 5% if o2 in the atmosphere. The other 95% comes from Algae and seaweed. Plant more seaweed.
Traditional farming would have to collapse for those numbers ever to be archived and thats obviously not a good thing for anyone. There’s no way they can find that amount of land for tree planting with trying to plant lakes and bogs.
Maybe if farmers stopped ripping all the trees and hedges out of it, that might be a start.
Ireland could cut its emissions entirely in the morning and it wouldn’t change a thing on the grand scale of things.
For this to make any sort of impact, China, India, Russia and the US have to do the same, but they wont.
Quit eating meat. The world could use a quarter of land used if we all went vegan.
The rest of the land could be rewilded.
(Look it up yourself, I’m not planning to have a vegan/meat eater debate. Its all easy to find.)
So we’re fucked then, time to invest in some high ground.
None of that monoculture shite either: we need heterogeneous tree composition to rebuild back our temperate rainforests.
Around about net zero chance of that happening. We are among the worst performers in Europe on climate and environment in general.
If we had planted timber in the early 1990s when climate change shot into the UN agenda, we’d have harvest ready softwood timber 10 years from now with which we could have built plenty of residential property, using houses as carbon banks. More houses, less carbon. So much squandered potential.
What if we stop breeding cows maybe
8000 hectares is about 4 Million trees (500 per hectare) so we definitely are a bit behind. Although I would happily pay an annual tax of maybe €15-20 a year to cover tree costs, if that’s what it went to.
I do a lot of this as an environmental engineer, I feel like there should be better regulations on carbon dioxide in infrastructure.
Actually, I think carbon tax would be great in this regard. So for example, if local authority or the like builds a road which produces maybe 30,000,000 kg of CO2, they plant trees to offset that over a 40-60 year period. Wouldn’t take all that many trees really, maybe 20-25 hectares.
This sub has 500k readers, so can we each agree to plant 160-400m² of trees per year?
Feels like we’re cutting down that much every year to build more housing estates.
What if we just all sucked the air in and held our breaths until the target deadline passed by? Surely that would work /s
I had an idea and its probably stupid but here me out. Forrest time shares. So you invest x amount say with 12 people and you kind of own x amount of land that is made into Forrest. You have the right to camp on this land for x amount of the year and there would be some amenities included in the price. Obviously it needs more thought your essentially investing in the environment and a holiday idea and a general investment.
We need to restore our bogs and wetlands. They are far superior as sources of carbon capture than trees.
How about we try nothing and then shrug our shoulders when we fail miserably
The JRE podcast with Dr Andrew Dessler gave a good lowdown on the issues of using tree planting to deal with carbon emissions
“*People responsible for 40% of all emissions say we should do something else to fix it*.”
We need to plant more, but alongside reducing agriculture emissions, not instead of it.
I’ve been donating to Wolfgang Reforest every month for a while now. They’re re-foresting a section of land with trees native to Ireland: https://www.wolfgangreforest.ie/
I had been wondering how many hectares Ireland was as thought this would be most of the country.
Ireland is 8.4421 million ha so probably only a small fraction of the country. Still needs to be done.
There’s endless barren land in North mayo around Bangor and nephin, why don’t they plant that entire area with diverse woodland? It would definitely increase tourism too.
buy disused or unsuitable fields from farmers regularly, wouldn’t even take too much money
I read an article yesterday that Data Centres account for 10% of our country’s energy needs. Rising to 60% if all the centres with planning permission get approved.
Is it any wonder the standing charges are going up! Someone has to pay for the upgrade of the infrastructure. And I wonder does Eamon Ryan think this increase will all be renewable’s
There is a company doing great work in Ireland called Grown, their link is below:
https://www.grown.ie/grown-forest
I bought an oak tree off the a couple of years ago. They only plant species native to Ireland
They’re doing a great job!
I’ve reduced my carbon footprint by not turning on the heating or and not going for any unnecessary drives (as I can’t afford the fucking fuel).
Also if we don’t pay the rising electricity bill wel be on track to be living fully off grid by next winter.