Let forests breathe new life into old farmland
sir – Philip Johnston (Comment, August 8) makes a case for reducing the burning of fossil fuels. Few would disagree. However, the replacement of fossil fuels by renewables is only part of the solution to the problem of climate change.
Recent estimates suggest that just over 25 per cent of carbon released as carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning is absorbed by the world’s oceans. A similar amount is absorbed by plants. It would thus be wise to harness nature’s capacity to absorb and store carbon by replanting forests on a grand scale.
Over the past decade, China – the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases – has spent $100 billion on reforestation. This effort, combined with the natural regeneration of embryo forest on vast tracts of abandoned farmland in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, has offset 81 per cent of the carbon capture capacity lost to felling tropical biomass since 2003. In Britain, re-wilding our treeless uplands would allow new tracts of forest to be developed.
Margaret Thatcher correctly acknowledged the link between industrial activity and the increase in global temperature. Capitalism may have helped to cause the problem; it can equally provide the investment, resources and skills to reduce and reverse that damage. Brian Clouston
Past President, The Landscape Institute Windermere, Cumbria