People are enamored with tree-planting these days. It is a widely promoted claim that planting new trees with 'save the planet' and that saving any tree with do the same. Michelle Stirling, Communications Manager for Friends of Science, went to the woods where one of her favorite spruce trees had fallen, due to a summer twister, and out of curiosity, she wanted to know how much carbon dioxide that 15 meter tall spruce tree would have absorbed during its lifespan. She asked our forestry consultant and reports back all the details. Ultimately, we're looking at tree planting the wrong way. It's not the relatively nominal carbon dioxide they absorb that is of value to planet earth - it is their beauty, shade, cycles of growth and shedding of leaves or cones, and the fact that they give a home to other creatures that share our ecosystem, from bugs, to birds, to chipmunks and squirrels - and even to the beavers that come to chop them down for a home. Like trees, human beings are also carbon beings, but we exhale significant amounts of carbon dioxide every day. This is the risk we face from climate zealots, who are more interested in saving trees than humans. This is the risk we face for civilization if people become nothing more than a countable carbon footprint, especially the elderly and vulnerable, who may then be identified as 'useless eaters.' Michelle refers to disturbing evidence from "Geriatrics in an Era of Climate Change" as an example of climate zealotry in medical care, where the vulnerable elderly in the UK are having the 'carbon footprint' of their frailty counted against the National Health System's "NetZero" goals and the UK's Paris climate targets. This is a dangerous, slippery, dehumanizing slope...and we are already on it.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7J8Mtf-_Og