Let's Cut Down Trees and Launch Them Into Space to Save the Planet (#2)

Okay, now that I've got your attention, perhaps you'll realize that this suggestion is just as valid, and nonetheless just as absurd, as the timber industry's assertion that younger forests are better for the atmosphere than old growth forests. The difference is that the latter was crafted to profit from people's ignorance of the carbon cycle; the former was intended to stimulate better understanding and creative problem-solving through humor.

My idea for this week's article began a few days ago when my friend Ed, a Ph.D. chemist, suggested a good way to combat global climate change: cutting down massive amounts of trees and launching them into outer space. In principle this will work. His other suggestion was a bit more dubious: making large amounts of plastic and burying it in landfills. Regardless, I have to give Ed credit for thinking outside the box.

Any time a group (such as the six billion inhabitants of the earth) tries to solve a problem, it's a good idea to use a problem-solving model that starts with a generative phase before proceeding to a reductive phase. In the generative phase, we accept and write down all solutions offered, even joke solutions (such as "let's sell all the carbon to aliens"). The hope is that those suggestions will stimulate creativity. Only after completing the generative phase is it appropriate to proceed to the reductive phase and start crossing out the ideas that obviously won't work, and then examining the remaining ideas under a critical lens. A common mistake is to start criticizing and reducing the list before all the ideas have appeared, which can prevent some ideas from ever being born.

Indulge me in a quick real-life example. A power utility was plagued with power line breakages due to ice buildup, and they hired a problem-solving consultant to work with the firm's employees to brainstorm possible solutions. No one had any ideas. The consultant urged the employees to put forth any and all suggestions, no matter how outrageous they sounded. After long minutes of dead silence, the consultant called for a coffee break. One of the employees gestured with his coffee cup, laughing, and said, "Let's just send a bear up there to knock the ice down." The consultant overheard the joke and asked the man to repeat it when they reconvened, which he was reluctant to do. When the man was finally prodded to speak, the whole company broke into laugher and lively discussion. Someone joked, "How will we convince the bear to go up the power pole?" The response came, "Put a giant honey pot up there." "How do we get the honey pot up there?" Asked someone else. "Maybe we could lower it there with a helicopter." Sooner or later, someone realized that the downdraft from the helicopter's rotor might dislodge the ice. This turned out to be the solution that worked. Minus the bear and honey, of course.

The moral of this story: consider absurd suggestions as possible routes toward true solutions.

Back to the question of global climate change. As every sixth-grader in our country learns, when a plant does photosynthesis, it takes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, releases the oxygen atoms back to the atmosphere, and keeps the carbon in its biomass. Scientists call this "carbon sequestration." In fact, most of a plant's biomass comes from carbon sequestered from the atmosphere. And what the timber industry says is true: younger forests do sequester more carbon per year than old-growth forests, because they grow faster. (This should be obvious: the faster a tree grows, or accumulates biomass, the more carbon it is removing from the atmosphere to create that biomass.) Does this mean we should combat global warming by chopping down old-growth forests and planting younger forests? Even though it would work, it's probably not the best idea. Old-growth forests have ecological and aesthetic value far in excess of their shortcomings in carbon sequestration. (Here's another example for comparison: standing dead trees, or snags, are slowly releasing their carbon, not sequestering any, but they are habitat to four times as many animals as live trees.)

The problem is, as soon as the plant or tree dies, it starts to decompose, releasing its carbon back to the atmosphere. In order to make the sequestration permanent, the tree must somehow be prevented from decomposing in our atmosphere. The formation of fossil fuels was a great way to prevent this: millions of years ago, the trees and plants were buried and compressed until they metamorphosed into coal and petroleum, keeping that carbon locked up under the earth. Obviously our burning of those fossil fuels is the main reason why the equilibrium has shifted toward more atmospheric carbon.

How else might we keep the sequestered carbon locked away? The timber industry would like us to do it by building using wood. This would work great, of course, and it happens to be something that the timber industry would benefit from. It needs to be done in a way that's sensitive to other ecological concerns such as habitat, erosion, biodiversity, and old growth preservation. Ed thinks we should launch the trees out into space. (I question whether we can get them into space without burning any fossil fuels, directly or indirectly.) I think he just likes the delicious irony of cutting down trees to save the planet.

But what about burying plastic? Well, really that's a zero-sum game again, and I don't think it will help. We make plastic from petroleum from the earth, with carbon sequestered by ancient plants; if the plastic ends up in the landfill, all we've done is put that same carbon back under the earth. We haven't actually sequestered any new carbon from the atmosphere. And in the process we probably burned a lot of fossil fuels.

What if we combined Ed's two ideas with something from Body World's inventor Gunther von Hagens: Plastination. The process is used to stop the decomposition of human flesh after death, by replacing the fluids in the tissue with a polymer that subsequently hardens into plastic. Perhaps we could do the same thing to wood, ensuring that it will never decompose, thus keeping all the carbon locked up not only in the wood, but also in the plastic. No space launch required. Just an expensive and labor-intensive mummification process. (I wonder if millions of people will line up to see the mummified wood.)

For that matter, animals (including humans) are huge carbon liberators. We take in large amounts of carbon by eating plants, and then we release that carbon back into the atmosphere by exhaling. Another solution would be to kill all the animals (including humans) on the planet and launch them into space. Or better yet, Plastinate them. Maybe the trees will line up to see us.

Now Dave Barry might have ended this article with just such a cute, pithy line. If you like his style, just stop reading.

Since you're still reading, I take it you either don't like Dave Barry or you don't follow instructions well.

I hope you all think more clearly if not more humorously about the carbon cycle. As Ed astutely points out, the real solution is to stop burning fossil fuels. It won't be enough just to burn less - we have to stop altogether. And we probably need to promote carbon sequestering if we're going to have a prayer of bringing the carbon equilibrium back to pre-industrial levels. Furthermore, all six billion of us need to ante up with our ideas about how to do that - no matter how crazy they sound. Maybe people will start talking about the carbon cycle, even joking about it. The jokes might take us to a solution that will work.