In July 2019, a British ecologist co-authored a study estimating that Earth had space for an extra trillion trees on land not used for agriculture or settlement. Its implications were intoxicatingly hopeful. By restoring forests in an area roughly the size of China, the press release accompanying the paper suggested two-thirds of all emissions from human activities still present in the atmosphere could be removed. The study, led by Jean-François Bastin, a postdoctoral researcher at Crowther’s lab in ETH Zürich, Switzerland, was the second most featured climate paper in the media in 2019, according to one analysis. 

It inspired the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) One Trillion Trees Initiative, launched last year after Salesforce billionaire Marc Benioff read the paper on the recommendation of Al Gore, the former US vice-president. 

The study has now faced intense scientific criticism. 

Several ecologists were outraged that forest restoration was framed as the “most effective climate change solution to date”, arguing that it was a dangerously misleading distraction from the urgency of cutting fossil fuel emissions. 

Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist and director at California’s Breakthrough Institute, pointed out problems with the paper when it came out. “Reforestation might buy us up to a decade of time – maybe six or seven years of current emissions,” he says. “It’s not nothing, but it doesn’t really fundamentally change the story: we still need some pretty massive reductions in our emissions. The brutal maths of climate change is that, as long as emissions are above zero, the world will continue to warm. You’re going to max out pretty soon if you only try to use forests. Tree planting is not an alternative to mitigation.”

   The paper dramatically overstated where new forests could grow by including savannahs and grasslands in its artificial intelligence-derived estimate of land suitable. Ecologists were divided over how to reforest: allow humans to plant enormous numbers of saplings or leave ecosystems to regenerate on their own? Some feared the paper would be used to justify indiscriminate tree-planting, with damaging consequences for biodiversity, agriculture and access to water.

The science behind the press release’s claim that new forests could suck in two-thirds of all historic human emissions remaining in the atmosphere was also questioned. In May 2020, the study’s authors made three corrections, including an acknowledgment that they were incorrect to state “tree restoration is the most effective solution to climate change to date”, and clarifying that new forests could absorb about half as much carbon from the air as the paper initially appeared to suggest, explaining that they did not mean reforestation was a potential magic bullet or a substitute for reducing fossil fuel use. Reforestation was a potent tool for climate crisis mitigation, just less so than initially suggested, and certainly not a replacement for decarbonisation.

Last month, a global review of tree-planting initiatives in the tropics and subtropics since 1961 found that while dozens of organisations reported planting a total of 1.4 billion trees, just 18% mentioned monitoring and only 5% measured survival rates.

The lesson the World Socialist Movement would like to point out is that capitalism will grasp at any supposed solution to the climate crises if it means not only is capitalism preserved but another money-making scheme is created for what can be called ecopreneurs

‘I’ve never said we should plant a trillion trees’: what ecopreneur Thomas Crowther did next | Trees and forests | The Guardian

 Universal credit is a government benefit paid to about six million people who are on a low income or don’t have a job. A £20 weekly drop in the payment, which will come into effect next month. It’s happening because the government’s ending a booster payment that was brought in last year to help support people when the UK first went into lockdown in April 2020.

 African American children are suffering long-term disadvantages as a result of vast and growing disparities in the wealth of US families, with Black families with kids having access to barely 1 cent for every dollar enjoyed by their white counterparts.

 Wealth Inequality and Child Development, a compilation of the latest research published by the Russell Sage Foundation, new research by scholars on US inequality shows that the basic wealth levels of families from different racial and ethnic backgrounds have diverged to such a stark degree in the past three decades that the future prospects of children from lower-wealth groups are likely to be grossly compromised.

In 2019, the median wealth level for a white family with children in the US was $63,838.

 The same statistic for a Black family with children was $808. Among Black families homeownership is much less common, as are savings or inheritance, which collectively shrinks the median wealth to the paltry figure of $808.

Hispanic families with kids fare little better. They have a median wealth of $3,175, which equates to 5 cents for every dollar of wealth in an equivalent white household.

Christina Gibson-Davis, a professor of public policy and sociology at Duke University who is co-editor of the new research, pointed to one of its central findings – that wealth inequality between American families has become so extreme that 1% of parents control 44% of all wealth held by households with children, while the top 10% control 82%.

“When the top 10% of parents control 82% of all the wealth in child households, that opens up opportunities and choices they make for their children that are not available to the bottom 90%,” Gibson-Davis said. “Wealth is so stratified by race and ethnicity that it perpetuates that racial inequality into the next generation,” Gibson-David explained. “ We are OK with having winners and losers in the childhood wealth lottery. White kids born to well-educated parents are going to enjoy relatively high levels of wealth – the vast majority of kids don’t have that luxury.”

Staggering US wealth inequality heaps long-term harm on to minority children | Inequality | The Guardian

 Over the past four decades, satellite records have shown how increasing global temperatures have had a profound effect on the Arctic. Warming in the region is far more pronounced than in the rest of the world and has caused a rapid shrinkage of summer sea ice. Scientists have long been concerned about the implications of this amplification of global change for the rest of the planet.

 More money is to be spent on the US military.

A House of Representatives panel on Wednesday approved a $37.5 billion increase to the Pentagon budget from last year.

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2022 amendment would add $25 billion to President Joe Biden’s $753 billion topline military spending request for the next fiscal year.

It puts arms dealer profits before the needs of everyday people.

William Hartung, director of Arms & Security Program at the Center for International Policy, noted that “Biden’s proposed Pentagon budget was already at near-record levels before the House Armed Services Committee’s reckless recommendation.

Joseph Cirincione, a distinguished fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, called the move as “outrageous” and “strategically bankrupt.”

“In a time of climate crisis, a raging pandemic, rampant racial injustice, and growing income inequity,” he said, “Congress votes to increase the size of the trough for the arms dealers who fund their campaigns.”

‘Outrageous’ and ‘Shameful’: House Panel Approves $37.5B Boost to Pentagon Budget | Common Dreams News

Many Americans won’t make that connection with extreme weather because most media reporting doesn’t contain the words “climate change”.

 Six of the biggest commercial TV networks in the US – ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, NBC and MSNBC – ran 774 stories about Hurricane Ida from 27 to 30 August, an analysis by the watchdog group Media Matters found. Only 34 of those stories, barely 4%, mentioned climate change.

The vast majority of news coverage chooses climate silence, not climate science.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined others in linking the climate emergency to the nation’s growing inequality.

“Many of these deaths occurred in basement dwellings, many of which are illegal and growing in number due to the unaffordable housing crisis, but do not meet safety standards required to keep people safe in incidents like flash floods,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “These are working class, immigrant, and low-income people and families.”

Once more the Green New Deal is being again being promoted as an answer to this global phenomenon. A lot more than some legislative palliatives is required.  

 Sundays at 19.30 (IST)

Weekly WSP (India) meeting

Friday 3 September 19.30 BST (GMT + 1)

Did you see the news?

Host: Howard Moss

General current affairs discussion

Friday 10 September 19.30 BST (GMT + 1)

Friday 17 September 19.30 BST (GMT + 1)

From socialist calculation to political ecology

Guest Speaker: John O’Neill

Ludwig von Mises claimed that ‘socialist calculation’ (as calculation without money) was irrational. The current ecological crises show that it is capitalist calculation that is irrational and harmful.

Friday 24 September No meeting

Friday 1 October 19.30 BST (GMT + 1)

Did you see the news?

Host: Paddy Shannon

General current affairs discussion

Sunday 3 October 12.00 noon BST (GMT + 1)

Central Branch: Regular first Sunday of the month meeting.

More than 480 million people living in the vast swathes of central, eastern and northern India, including the capital New Delhi, endure significantly high pollution levels, said the report by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC).

“Alarmingly, India’s high levels of air pollution have expanded geographically over time,” according to the EPIC study

Air pollution is likely to reduce the life expectancy of about 40 percent of Indians by more than nine years.

 Air quality has significantly worsened in the western state of Maharashtra and the central state of Madhya Pradesh, it said.

India’s National Clean Air Program (NCAP), could raise the country’s overall life expectancy by 1.7 years and that of New Delhi residents by 3.1 years. NCAP aims to reduce pollution by 20 to 30 percent in the 102 worst-affected cities by 2024 by ensuring cuts in industrial emissions and vehicular exhaust, introducing stringent rules for transport fuels and biomass burning, and reducing dust pollution. It will also entail better monitoring systems.

 Bangladesh could raise average life expectancy by 5.4 years if the country improved air quality to levels recommended by the World Health Organization.

Pollution to cut 9 years of life expectancy of 40% Indians: Study | Climate News | Al Jazeera