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LETTER: Huge benefits from planting trees

On the heels of Earth Day, Dyck says there’s major benefits to keep it up
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Ethan Andrews (left) and his aunt Shihana Wewala were two of the volunteers planting trees with Pitt Meadows parks workers in Bonson Park. (Neil Corbett - Black Press Media file photo)

I would like to thank the community of Vernon for their wonderful support of the huge success of the tree giveaway event put on by the Sustainable Environment Network Society.

On April 10, 2021, we gave out 1,500 trees. We were prepared to hand out trees for five hours but all the trees were given away in one.

The reason for this event was to promote awareness of the important role trees play in the planet’s climate plus other environmental benefits. The very best way to sequester CO2 from the atmosphere is to plant trees.

There is one country on this planet that absorbs three times more CO2 than it emits. The country is Bhutan which is located between India and Tibet. Sixty per cent of the land in Bhutan is forest.

A major scientific study was done recently in Switzerland, which indicated there is enough land on this planet to plant billions of trees to absorb 25 per cent of the CO2 that is already in our atmosphere.

This land does not encroach on farmland or urban centres.

We do need some carbon in the atmosphere to keep our planet warm, but we are now at 412.5 parts per million (ppm) CO2 and scientists report that we need to get down to 350 ppm to keep us safe from a climate crisis.

What is just as important is to reduce the CO2 going into the atmosphere. Progress is being made in this direction as almost all major car manufacturers are now planning to phase out the production of fossil fuel burning cars and produce only electric cars or fuel cell cars.

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled on March 25, 2021, that man-made climate change is real and that climate change is an existential threat to human life.

Terry Dyck