• Question: What effects will happen when cars are still petrol and diesel after 20,000,000 trees hav been planted

    Asked by view46cup to Philip, Maxime, Jake, Ann, Annette, Amy Heather on 8 Nov 2019.
    • Photo: Ann Reen

      Ann Reen answered on 8 Nov 2019:

      With the best will in the world diesel & petrol cars will still emit emmisions to the atmosphere like particulate matter that can have an impact on people’s airways so it would be better to move torwards a greener fuel like electric cars that doesn’t have any air emissions.

    • Photo: Philip Schuler

      Philip Schuler answered on 11 Nov 2019:

      In general, it’s great to plant trees to capture carbon – I am not sure though how much carbon is captured by one tree, and what this equals then to a car. It would very much depend on the type of tree and its size, as well as the emission of a single car…if that’s what you are looking for?

    • Photo: Jake Cunningham

      Jake Cunningham answered on 11 Nov 2019:

      Hi there view46cup, planting trees is called afforestation and while as Philip said is great for capturing carbon while we still use petrol and diesel cars it would not have the effect that we need. Not only are we aiming to reduce emissions to go carbon neutral we are trying to become carbon negative which we will need more trees to do so, but we are a very long way from these goals

    • Photo: Amy Heather Fitzpatrick

      Amy Heather Fitzpatrick answered on 21 Nov 2019:

      This is a great question but I am not sure I can give you a definite answer. Basically three cars per fossil fuelled car would be needed approximately. The older those trees are the better they are at carbon trapping and when you cut them down, they release that carbon back into the world. There are 1 billion cars approximately in the world. There are over three trillion trees worldwide and we would need to add about 3 billon extra, and not cut them down. Do you think this is possible? DO we have enough space to do this? Do we plant them all over the world or in one place in the world? Its a very complex question to answer but than you for asking. Hopefully, we reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and plant more trees

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