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Comment by jerkstate

I did a rough spreadsheet some time back based on this 1998 EPA carbon sequestration worksheet [1] and found that an average person from a high carbon output country needs about 600-1000 trees to offset their carbon output.

There are about 3 trillion trees for a population of 7 billion people for an average of 428 trees per person, so that means you have to make up the delta of about 172 to 572 trees over the course of your lifetime to erase your carbon footprint (of course, young trees don't sequester as much carbon, so your footprint will still be positive for much of your lifetime - but as the trees get older, they sequester at a higher rate per year, which eventually gives you a negative footprint). This projection was based on the CO2 sequestration per year and the average survival rate documented in [1].

[1] https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/Downloads/method-calculat...

parent jerkstate 7 years ago

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