We currently have two problems. Carbon emissions and the common agricultural policy wasting money on paying farmers to do nothing. Why has it not occured to anyone to use a combined solution?
It is estimated that one acre of forest can remove and store about 19,000 lbs of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year
14 million acres of prime farmland - an areas the size of the West Midlands - is ‘set aside’, in the UK alone
14000000 * 19,000 = 266,000,000,000lbs or 120,655,570 metric tons of Carbon can be absorbed per year by planting set-aside land with tree's.
That is one quarter of the 550 odd millions tons of carbon emitted by the UK every year. This is a massive improvement on the Governments current targets and costs nothing because we pay farmers not to farm that land anyway. Simply change the terms of the CAP to say that if you still want your money you will have to run a "carbon farm" by planting tree's.
If this idea were extended to all of the european set-aside the benefits would be massive. We would cut our emissions massively and at the same stroke do away with the (quite valid) objection to paying farmers to do nothing. We would be paying them to save the planet. Total extra cost = 0.
I'm looking for holes in this idea, I suspect this is the perfect place to find them........
It is estimated that one acre of forest can remove and store about 19,000 lbs of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year
14 million acres of prime farmland - an areas the size of the West Midlands - is ‘set aside’, in the UK alone
14000000 * 19,000 = 266,000,000,000lbs or 120,655,570 metric tons of Carbon can be absorbed per year by planting set-aside land with tree's.
That is one quarter of the 550 odd millions tons of carbon emitted by the UK every year. This is a massive improvement on the Governments current targets and costs nothing because we pay farmers not to farm that land anyway. Simply change the terms of the CAP to say that if you still want your money you will have to run a "carbon farm" by planting tree's.
If this idea were extended to all of the european set-aside the benefits would be massive. We would cut our emissions massively and at the same stroke do away with the (quite valid) objection to paying farmers to do nothing. We would be paying them to save the planet. Total extra cost = 0.
I'm looking for holes in this idea, I suspect this is the perfect place to find them........