As a recent must-read New York Times article detailed (“With Deaths of Forests, a Loss of Key Climate Protectors”), climate change is contributing to the death of forests worldwide, threatening the future habitability of the planet.
Forests absorb more than 25% of humanity’s CO2 output. As the New York Times put it, “It is an amount so large that trees are effectively absorbing the emissions from all the world’s cars and trucks.”
Large scale forest death from global warming would be catastrophic. Not only would the trees stop absorbing carbon dioxide, but they would also release huge amounts of CO2 (from decay and burning), which would further increase the warming of the planet, creating a dangerous feedback loop.
Conservation is only part of the solution. We must limit the fossil-fuel burning that is altering the planet’s climate.
