Plant a Tree... Save the World...

TREES ABSORB CARBON DIOXIDE.

CARBON DIOXIDE IS THE GAS THAT CAUSES GLOBAL WARMING.

PLANT A TREE...SAVE THE WORLD...

I don't know how I can make it any clearer. It's early morning, the sun is just rising on this New Years day 2007 and it's a balmy 50 degrees F. and raining outside when it should be 20 degrees with 2 feet of snow on the ground.

We are deforesting our planet, killing off the one thing that can save us. There is no more time for argument and debate, because while people talk, the temperature is rising.

In 2006 I managed to plant 22 trees in my yard and have many more in my "tree bed" waiting to go in this year. Here are some tree facts for you taken from the Colorado Tree Coalition.

Carbon Sequestration:

· Heat from Earth is trapped in the atmosphere due to high levels of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other heat-trapping gases that prohibit it from releasing heat into space -- creating a phenomenon known as the "greenhouse effect." Trees remove (sequester) CO₂ from the atmosphere during photosynthesis to form carbohydrates that are used in plant structure/function and return oxygen back to the atmosphere as a byproduct. About half of the greenhouse effect is caused by CO₂. Trees therefore act as a carbon sink by removing the carbon and storing it as cellulose in their trunk, branches, leaves and roots while releasing oxygen back into the air.

· Trees also reduce the greenhouse effect by shading our homes and office buildings. This reduces air conditioning needs up to 30%, thereby reducing the amount of fossil fuels burned to produce electricity. This combination of CO₂ removal from the atmosphere, carbon storage in wood, and the cooling effect makes trees a very efficient tool in fighting the greenhouse effect.

· One tree that shades your home in the city will also save fossil fuel, cutting CO₂ buildup as much as 15 forest trees.

· Approximately 800 million tons of carbon are stored in U.S. urban forests with a $22 billion equivalent in control costs.

· Planting trees remains one of the cheapest, most effective means of drawing excess CO₂ from the atmosphere.

· A single mature tree can absorb carbon dioxide at a rate of 48 lbs./year and release enough oxygen back into the atmosphere to support 2 human beings.

· Each person in the U.S. generates approximately 2.3 tons of CO₂ each year. A healthy tree stores about 13 pounds of carbon annually -- or 2.6 tons per acre each year. An acre of trees absorbs enough CO₂ over one year to equal the amount produced by driving a car 26,000 miles. An estimate of carbon emitted per vehicle mile is between 0.88 lb. CO₂/mi. – 1.06 lb. CO₂/mi. (Nowak, 1993). Thus, a car driven 26,000 miles will emit between 22,880 lbs CO₂ and 27,647 lbs. CO₂. Thus, one acre of tree cover in Brooklyn can compensate for automobile fuel use equivalent to driving a car between 7,200 and 8,700 miles.

· If every American family planted just one tree, the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere would be reduced by one billion lbs annually. This is almost 5% of the amount that human activity pumps into the atmosphere each year.

· The U.S. Forest Service estimates that all the forests in the United States combined sequestered a net of approximately 309 million tons of carbon per year from 1952 to 1992, offsetting approximately 25% of U.S. human-caused emissions of carbon during that period.

· Over a 50-year lifetime, a tree generates $31,250 worth of oxygen, provides $62,000 worth of air pollution control, recycles $37,500 worth of water, and controls $31,250 worth of soil erosion.

If you live in an apartment or don't have any place to plant a tree here are some people at AmericanForests.org that will plant trees for you.

Please try to make it your New Years Resolution to help do something about this environmental catastrophe that is going on all around us.