A dumb arse promise out of the coalition agreement
Plant a billion trees over the next 10 years. 100,000,000 trees a year.
Sounds lovely and green, but a look at the numbers.
That requires the planting of 385,000 trees a day based on a 5 day week. It requires around 100,000 ha of land on which to plant those trees.
Pie in the sky stuff
It's roughly doubling the amount planted a year, currently 40k ha/annum.
https://pfolsen.blob.core.windows.net/productionme...
1 billion trees will sequester about 25mt of co2/annum with our co2 output being around 80mt/annum.
What else do you propose to improve the situation? (I have one idea that most won't like but will be great for many things)
I have no problem with the idea per se. I work in the forestry sector so need no convincing of the qualities of trees and wood, but it is the absolute bollocks of plucking numbers like that out of the air that gets my back up.
We have never planted 100,000ha in a year. We got close in the 1990s when vast tracts of shark house land on the east coast of the North Island were planted. There is some doubt that some of this will ever be harvested due to the terrain but that is a different story.
It takes around two years for a seedling to be ready for planting so it is unlikely many additional trees will be planted n the first two years. AT present we harvest approx 40,000ha a year of plantaton forrests. Assuming this is all replanted ( and it won't be) as large areas in the Central North Island and the South Island are being converted to other uses. Pine Forests south of North Canterbury have a very low yield compared to what happens further North. This means a minumum of say 60,000ha of land per annum, a total of 600,000 ha, an area about half the size of Northland, will need to be "found" to plant these forests.
This is before you even start on the issue of finding the Labour to plant trees. The industry as a whole, from Planting to Harvesting to Processing is desperate for good workers. They are very difficult to find. Very Difficult.
So as I say,No problem with the idea, but when you actually look at the numbers it is just pie in the sky stuff.
Alternative solutions? Reducing Levels of Carbon. Use more wood, The concrete industry is one of the greatest producers of man made Carbon, reducing vehicle emissions and probably knocking 2 0r 3 billion off the worlds population.