Going Carbon Neutral

"Carbon footprint is a measure of the amount of carbon dioxide or CO2 emitted through the combustion of fossil fuels; in the case of an organization, business or enterprise, as part of their everyday operations; in the case of an individual or household, as part of their daily lives; or a product or commodity in reaching market.

A carbon footprint is often expressed as tons of carbon dioxide or tons of carbon emitted, usually on a yearly basis. There are many versions of calculators available for carbon footprinting.

This is directly related to the amount of natural resources consumed, increasingly used or referred to as a measure of environmental impact. Carbon dioxide is recognized as a greenhouse gas, of which increasing levels in the atmosphere are linked to global warming and climate change.

The average carbon footprint per person in the United Kingdom is 10 tonnes a year. The average in the United States is 20 tonnes a year"

The reason I say that is because, if the practise were universally mandated, it would immediately become obvious that the only way to achieve this goal within a decade or even two would be to reduce the human population of the earth by at least 50% - or some other quite extreme consequence. This, as I say, would be remarkably educational for the survivors.

their basic idea is to amend kyoto protocols to include developing countries, especially countries with large rainforest areas, which suck up CO2. (currently kyoto only applies to industrialized countries). the idea would be that these countries - i.e. papa new guinea, ecuador, etc - would receive cash from countries that pollute under kyoto's pay-to-pollute carbon credit system. these cash rewards for being "carbon-negative" would be jiggered in such a way that they would equal or exceed whatever profit the govt. or controlling entities of the rainforests would receive from farming, logging, etc. .. in any case, they were expecting the US and saudi arabia to vote against it at the recent UN enviro conference in montreal, but they didn't - so it has a chance of going forward - but they need awareness of the issue, thus my post

20 tonnes a year = 20000000 g
a tree consume approximately 50 g of carbon dioxide per day
Ntrees = 20000000 g / 50 = 400000 trees per person * 295,734,134 ...
Genetically modified carbon dioxide super junkie trees to the rescue.

No, it'd be just 109 trees per person...right? You'd be dividing the 20 tons/year by 50g X 365 days (assuming that a tree is consuming C02 all year, rather than just when it has leaves, of course).

In order to plant 1095 trees and give them room enough to mature and flourish we'd need to locate vast numbers of acres for them to grow on. Since these would need to be fertile acres in decent tree-growing habitat, the only really obvious places to grow them would be on farmland that is presently growing food for humans or providing pasture for domestic animals.

(And, dollars to donuts that 50 grams of carbon per day doesn't apply to itty-bitty seedlings, but to trees at least twice as tall as I am.)

More trees for GAIA, less space for our rat-bastard farms fed with petroleum-based fertilizers and potable water. I kid. A LITTLE.

that's the thing. after posting I did notice I forgot to divide by 360 but still, unfortunately the exercice seemed sort of ludicrous after multiplying (ntrees per person) by, like, the whole pop. of usa . if someone knows about forestry it could be fun to know approx. how many acres it would take, considering tree density and type of forests and ?

I think I will ask some people I know, in the world of (hard)science(fiction)

I wonder if the hybrid cloned poplars farmed by the paper companies in my area are higher consumers of carbon - they grow at an incredible rate.

Yes. The root of the carbon problem is not so much the cutting of forest, as bad as that is, but the mining and burning of fossil carbon. However, doubling the size of a mature forest would sequester 100% more carbon than the original forest did, so it would help.