Imagine a device that captures one of life’s most essential-yet-destructive gases, stores it, and releases it where it needs to go. Did you know trees remove CO2? Almost all vegetation on earth does this to one degree or another, helping to keep our planet at a tolerable level of carbon dioxide, or CO2, but trees are the “earth’s lungs.”
We’re incredibly lucky that plants do this for us, because without them, who knows how all of the emissions that we humans emit would be affecting our planet. Although planting and growing trees is a big part of natural carbon sequestration, in some cases cutting them down also helps with this process. Find out how in this video from National Geographic:
Cutting Down Millions of Trees
Technology continues to improve and we are finding ways to implement lower CO2 emissions, an example of which isthe advent and widespread adoption of the electric car.However, it’s still helpful to understand and appreciate how our plants have kept us safe all these years and just how detrimental their ongoing eradication worldwideis negatively impacting life on the planet.
How Plants Capture And Store CO2
Going back to the basics: Grass, trees, and all other plants on earth capture and store CO2 through a process called photosynthesis. This process involves taking CO2 from the air and water from the ground to create the necessary materials for growth (wood in trees, for example), and then releasing clean oxygen into the atmosphere as a result.
While it may be the perfect air cleaning mechanism, we are quickly running out of plants to take advantage of this process. Therefore, governments and private companies have turned to all sorts of measures to improve the efficacy of plant-related CO2 storage.
There needs to be a worldwide, cultural sea-change away from the idea that clear cutting forests anywhere in the world is something that benefits the development of our society. That cutting down trees on one’s land to create expansive lawns are a hallmark of wealth. We need to get back to the idea that trees are hallowed lives that should be respected as we would respect our own elders. We need people to want more trees on their land not less. We need more Johnny Appleseeds and less Paul Bunyans.
Is planting a tree an option for you? Possibly in your yard, or on your land? If so, get the basics on planting trees here:
Modern-day measures include planting more trees, restoring grasslands, mechanically forcing more CO2 into plants, and many, many others–all intent on creating better, faster, more efficient ways to capture our planet’s emissions from the sky and transport it somewhere less harmful.
While these dedicated measures may be far more expensive than letting our natural plants do the work they were intended to do, they’re necessary for an age where over 7 billion people and countless corporations emit more greenhouse gases than ever before. Now more than ever we need to nurture the earth as we know that trees remove CO2!
