House Republicans propose planting a trillion trees as they move away from climate change denial

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

By STEPHEN GROVES
Published 11:03 PM CDT, July 17, 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — As Speaker Kevin McCarthy visited a natural gas drilling site in northeast Ohio to promote House Republicans’ plan to sharply increase domestic production of energy from fossil fuels last month, the signs of rising global temperatures could not be ignored. Smoke from Canadian wildfires hung in the air.

When the speaker was asked about climate change and forest fires, he was ready with a response: Plant a trillion trees.

The idea — simple yet massively ambitious — revealed recent Republican thinking on how to address climate change. The party is no longer denying that global warming exists, yet is searching for a response to sweltering summers, weather disasters and rising sea levels that doesn’t involve abandoning their enthusiastic support for American-produced energy from burning oil, coal and gas.

“We need to manage our forests better so our environment can be stronger,” McCarthy said, adding, “Let’s replace Russian natural gas with American natural gas and let’s not only have a cleaner world, let’s have a safer world.”




Read more: https://apnews.com/article/climate-change-republicans-trillion-trees-01e455acce4397c0376e82bfa18b72c2

[Tanuki]

1. One of their billionaire donors must be selling trees

[rurallib]

12. I think you have unveiled their motivation

[Seinan Sensei]

20. Acres and acres of pine plantations

... that lumber magnates can harvest in twenty years

[Tanuki]

25. After all, Koch Industries does own Georgia Pacific...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia-Pacific

"Georgia-Pacific LLC is an American pulp and paper company based in Atlanta, Georgia,[1] and is one of the world's largest manufacturers and distributors of tissue, pulp, paper, toilet and paper towel dispensers, packaging, building products and related chemicals. As of Fall 2019, the company employed more than 35,000 people at more than 180 locations in North America, South America and Europe. It is an independently operated and managed subsidiary of Koch Industries.."...(more)

[bronxiteforever]

38. +1 great info!

[hatrack]

57. And then they'll chip it, mix it with coal for power generation to make "clean coal"!

Neat trick, huh?

[LiberalArkie]

27. Maybe yes and Maybe no..

When ever a clear cut is done by a forestry company ie Potlatch, Georgia Pacific they replant thousands of trees. That is their recurring income. So in any given year, maybe a billion or more saplings are planted.

My guess is of they are planning on a trillion trees (pine) being planted, then there is going to be a hell of a lot of clear cutting done.

[modrepub]

33. They'll Probably Be Getting A Tax Break

for doing something they already should be doing if they are true stewards of the land.

Probably not a big carbon sink (new trees). Older trees incorporate more carbon than new ones as far as I've heard. If you're burning them or something similar, any carbon sequestration is lost anyway.

Trying to be positive given the circumstances, I guess its a start.

[LiberalArkie]

36. The forest timber is usually used for construction. After the word is cut to size, the leftover is

into the mulch along with all the shavings, bark etc. That is then used for particle board, also used in construction. What is left is then sent to a plant to make paper. All the timber that is cut and is not suitable for lumber is mulched and is sent the route above.

None is burned as this defeats the whole system (unless a house built with it catches on fire).

The timber companies pay some good money on property taxes, inspection etc of the property that only has one use and that is to grow timber. For countinuing profits it has to be replanted, cut (hopefully before a forest fire or some wood beetles eat it up , replanted etc.

[2naSalit]

40. +!

[Grins]

48. Happened years ago.

A scheme to support one of their donors who sold saplings for reforestation. Think it was in Mississippi.

[dchill]

2. Yes. Republicans should resign now and get started planting!

Dig, Baby, Dig!

[underpants]

3. 🌲🌳🌲🌳

Thanks. The local talk radio idiot posts on Facebook and this should get a rise out of those morons.

[randr]

4. Where can I send a shovel

Only constructive proposal I have ever heard from them in all my long years

[Merlot]

5. And after that we'll have a giant bake sale to cure homelessness.

And who's going to sweep those forests?

[Backseat Driver]

6. Common advice for planting trees: Keep well-watered during at least

the first year after planting(?) Steal Lake Michigan?

[relayerbob]

7. They're trying to find out if they really are

dumber than tree stumps

[lapfog_1]

8. oh good, more fuel for the next set of forest fires

planting forests is a good idea, especially if we stopped consuming fossil fuels AND aggressively fight forest fires for a few decades until the CO2 levels decrease.

[Sky Jewels]

9. Yeah, it's way too late, fuck heads.

Shoulda listened to Al Gore.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

10. This falls neatly into the general category of "I suppose something is better than nothing"

Even if it's probably not going to do shit (even if it did actually happen), at least there's a tacit admission that CO2 is 'a problem', so ... baby steps I guess.

What's going to amuse me (and I don't mean in a good way) is when the former denialists en masse switch tacks entirely and blame 'scientists' for NOT telling us all this devastation was going to happen so soon!!!

I mean, what we're seeing is damn near the worst-case scenarios as presented to us by 'the scientists' of 20 years ago.

Seems very likely to me that this will be the next reason to dismiss science and climate models. "They told us it'd be 2050 and now it's happening in 2025!!! See, can't believe the scientists!!!" kinda shit.

If for no other reason they'll do it because they know it'll annoy the FUCK out of 'the liberals' and make our collective heads explode.

[hatrack]

16. This was The Hill's headline: "Scientists Failed For Decades To Communicate The Coming Risks"

Link to tweet

Further proof that while Politico is the cloud of flies, The Hill is the pile of shit that they orbit.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

18. I had not seen that, but I am SO unsurprised ...

I've felt like bullshit like this was coming for a long time.

[Irish_Dem]

11. Just another way to rip off the US taxpayer.

[hatrack]

13. A bullshit non-solution from the party of bullshit non-solutions . . .

What else did anyone expect?

[ancianita]

14. An election year. McCarthy & syndicate team see which way the voter winds blow. This is their 180.

[BlueIdaho]

15. What are the odds

They will all be a single genetically modified monoculture? Who “owns” the patent on these trees? Monsanto?

[Rural_Progressive]

17. Who knew??

I had no idea that American natural gas burned cleaner than Russian natural gas.

[former9thward]

44. Almost everyone in the business knows.

Natural gas produced in the United States is much cleaner than in Russia, which is notorious for methane leaks in its oil and natural gas sector. In fact, the International Energy Agency has ranked Russia as the world's worst emitter.

U.S.-produced natural gas, on the other hand, continues to become cleaner and is a significant reason behind Executive Director of the IEA Fatih Birol's declaration that "in the last 10 years, the emissions reductions in the United States has been the largest in the history of energy."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2022/03/03/europes-embrace-of-natural-gas-is-a-boon-for-american-workers/?sh=7ad0db2e517f

[Dorn]

19. Planting trees is a good thing but for carbon offset it is an easy fraud

For fun: https://www.thejuicemedia.com/carboncredits/

[VGNonly]

21. Brawndo

It's what trees want!

[Hugh_Lebowski]

29. Oh, they crave it. It's got electrolytes! (nt)

[Bayard]

22. An excellent idea!

But you should have started years ago, Kevin. You can't claim planting trees now is going to affect climate change and global warming much, especially the years it takes for them to mature.

But, go to it. Do something useful. And it will provide jobs.

[machoneman]

23. Hey A-hole! Yeah, you Kevin. Here's a shovel. Start digging. See you in 1,000 years! DORK!

[Xipe Totec]

24. On whose land?

If you plant softwood trees like pines you need 12 ft between trees. That means you can plant at most 300 trees per acre.
One trillion trees would require 3.3 billion acres.
There are 640 acres per square mile, so that's 5.2 million square miles. That's an area roughly the size of Connecticut.

So where are you going to get that much plantable land?

Can't use the national parks because those are already forested.

So whose land are you going to take to plant these trees, and whose water are you going to confiscate to water them?

[Dorn]

28. That is my question

1 - On who's land
2 - Carbon in the atmosphere lasts for many centuries
3 - Trees don't live forever
4 - Who replants the trees that die due to climate change and/or pestilence

[hatrack]

39. Huh? The entire US is about 3.53 million square miles . . .

That's another problem with this green smokescreen - lack of arable land.

[Xipe Totec]

46. Off by a factor of 1,000 - thank for the correction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_area

Alaska is 655k square miles.

So, yea, not enough land in the US, and what's there is owned.

[hatrack]

50. Land - how does it work?

It's like all those people who say that we'll just grow corn and cotton and rice in northern Manitoba as things keep warming. How? By plowing up the Laurentian Shield? Lotsa luck with that . . .

[patphil]

26. Let me guess, they're going to get the Canadians to pay for them.

[IronLionZion]

30. They already blame trees for wildfires

surely some of them will argue that we need less trees to prevent wildfires.

[NowsTheTime]

35. Magas do have imaginations, unfortunately they don't use them to solve problems..

[Xipe Totec]

47. Remember when Regan blamed trees for pollution?

[IronLionZion]

51. Trees absorb pollution and release it in their pollen

so the type of people who misunderstand that are the same ones who think "global cooling" was a concern decades ago when chemicals used in HVAC and fridges were destroying the ozone layer.

[Rebl2]

31. Yes let's

plant thousands of pine trees that blow up like bombs when they catch fire.

[IronLionZion]

32. The world has about 3 trillion trees if people want to put it into perspective

so this would mean planting 1/3 of the world's existing number of trees.

I guess we have lots of usable land and water lying around somewhere, right?

[NowsTheTime]

34. When a tree burns, you release carbon dioxide, you release heat, & you destroy a carbon sink...

Focus on preserving the trees we have....if we can...

....Wow! They have just admitted that carbon dioxide in the air is much of the problem! (natural gas, methane released to the air is also a green house gas, and melting permafrost releases trapped methane)....

Global warming is a compounding problem!

[Hekate]

37. Plant in the inner cities first, and work your way outward.

[truthisfreedom]

41. Biden already banned the import of any energy from Russia.

We need to increase wind and solar, not burn more natural gas. Trees are great, but it’s pie in the sky politics to suggest planting a third of the world’s trees in the US. Ask MIT, they’ve done studies. Carbon sequestration in trees is completely impossible. They burn, decay, and otherwise return carbon to the atmosphere. We need to stop adding carbon to the equation.

https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-many-new-trees-would-we-need-offset-our-carbon-emissions

[marble falls]

42. How are they going to water them?

[former9thward]

45. The same way forests are watered.

[NickB79]

53. Thanks to climate change, that way is now less reliable

And even with decent rainfall, the increasing heatwaves we now have are triggering flash droughts.

[former9thward]

54. Then we do nothing.

Incredible that planting trees is being met with such fierce resistance and a million excuses why it will not work.

[marble falls]

56. There's more than one way to this and maybe 1 trillion trees isn't the most effective. Cutting ...

... down on emissions is something that could be done immediately. The hole in the Ozone healed very quickly by eliminating the use of tons of CFCs. There are forests dying right now with not enough rain.

It's not that a trillion more trees isn't a good goal, but if it's an ineffective window dressing for what goes for the GOP's lack of any sort of plan regarding global warming that they are only halfheartedly coming to accept in small degrees, it becomes like the corporation that spent $5M in advertising bragging about their corporate conscience by donating $50,000 of bottled water.

[area51]

58. +1 n/t

[Javaman]

43. while some trees will help it's just a bandaid on a broken arm.

and a "trillion" trees is just disingenuous bullshit.

if he was actually serious, which he is not, he would lobby Brazil to plant back much of the lost Amazon rain forest.

[Mawspam2]

49. Okay, now who is going to rake the forests?

Link to tweet

?s=20

[NowsTheTime]

52. Hopefully someone many would lilke to in suit that matches his complexion!

[Emile]

55. I get sick of their childish behavior over serious problems.

It's all partisan politics to own the libs with these do nothing idiots.

[Ray Bruns]

59. Let's replace Russian natural gas with American natural gas"

How the hell does that solve the problem, numb nuts?