That is what is proposed by more than one leading scientist: grow trees to capture carbon, then burn them for fuel and sequester the carbon. Hmmmm….do you trust corporations and governments to do this without deforesting the planet? I certainly don’t!

The life cycle of most trees is way beyond the human life cycle. We do not have a sustainable population on this planet, by most counts: the number of humans vastly outnumbers the regenerative capacity of nature to support them (unless most of the world turns to permaculture and similar solutions). There are areas of the world that are barren today that were once lushly forested–our ancestors of thousands of years past cut the trees and then the soil blew away and then . . .

Even now, the corporations and speculators are buying up South American biofuel capacity–that translates to people cutting rain forests to plant corn and other biofuel crops. Something greatly wrong with that picture. Why would anyone feel that if the planet largely turns to wood burning for fuel that our children will know what a mature tree and mature forests will look like? We’ll end up with mono-cultured tree farms that are called woods.

Will that support life?

By the way, have you noticed more trees down in your area? I have. More and more people are planning to heat their homes with wood this year and I see more and more lots either clear-cut or thinned of large trees. That doesn’t make me happy.

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