Despite the romanticised picture he paints of multinational corporations planting forests in happy partnership with Brazilian peasants, Ridley makes a grave mistake to assume the newly emerging market for carbon credits will save the world's forests. Climate change is a serious environmental problem that threatens ecosystems and economies around the world. While trees absorb carbon from the atmosphere, they are not the answer to climate change. Carbon stored in trees is not permanently stored. The burning of fossil fuels releases carbon locked away underground for millions of years.
Trees only store carbon for a short period of time.
Bushfires, droughts, pests, disease and logging can all result in the release of the stored carbon back into the atmosphere, making climate change worse. There is also considerable scientific uncertainty associated with the measurement and accounting of carbon stored in vegetation, making it impossible to develop a trading scheme that delivers real environmental benefits. Rather than saving the world's forests, climate change poses an additional threat. New research by the respected UK Hadley Centre for Climate Research shows the impacts of climate change will begin to destroy vast stretches of forest within the next 40 years unless serious action is taken to reduce fossil-fuel emissions. This will result in the carbon stored in these forests being released back into the atmosphere.