A Thought Experiment - Entropy, Part 6
February 4, 2020

    In 2018, according to a study published by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, the total amount of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere in the United States for that year alone was equivalent to approximately 16 metric tons per person.  With a population of nearly 330 million, that comes out to 5.28 billion metric tons.  Worldwide, CO2 emissions in 2018 topped 37 billion metric tons.  That's 37,000,000,000 metric tons – or more than the weight of 220 million blue whales.

     Let that sink in.

   No really, I mean it – we need to let that sink in.  It's already sinking into the world‛s oceans, causing the acidification that is contributing to the death of coral reefs and the die-off of other marine life. And too much of what‛s not sinking into the oceans is hanging out in the atmosphere, trapping sunlight prematurely – with effects we cannot fully predict, much less control with anything akin to wisdom.

    The air and the oceans are not where all that carbon dioxide belongs.  The carbon atoms belong back in trees, grass, and soil, where they can do the positive, cyclical work of feeding, clothing, and sheltering life on this planet, powered by the clean, free energy of the sun.  And the oxygen – well, I think we all know where those atoms belong. (Also, recall that it is plants that do the work of breaking the CO2 into its component parts, with zero assistance from us.  That's a good bargain for us – something for nothing!)

    Now, to be fair, some of the carbon dioxide is being reabsorbed by the world's extant plant and microbial life.  The problem is our emissions are outpacing the Earth's natural absorption capacity, largely due to our heavy – and largely thoughtless – reliance on fossil fuels.

    But this is a solvable problem, at least in theory.  Recall that a single white oak tree, if it reaches full maturity and lives to the ripe old age of 100 years, absorbs approximately 13.5 metric tons of carbon dioxide over the course of its lifetime.  So, since my personal emissions load, as a person living in the U.S., is around 16 metric tons per year, I could, in theory, plant enough white oak trees  over the course of my lifetime to cancel out the emissions for which I am responsible.  If I didn't want to bother with accounting for the existing background absorption rate of Earth's botanical inventory, I could, in theory, plant white oak trees at a rate of 1.2 per year, plus a few more to account for attrition (loss before full maturity) and a few more to account for all the years I've lived so far in which I haven't planted any trees. Or, if I wanted to be a little more sophisticated about it, I could, in theory, figure out the background CO2 absorption rate of the Earth's current inventory of plants, then adjust that rate to account for general human population growth worldwide, and for the probable rate of loss of plant life from deforestation, suburban sprawl, industrial and agro-chemical waste, and other factors (or a gain in plant life, if those trends reverse).  I could then, in theory, subtract the amount of background CO2 absorption that is occurring without my assistance from the baseline capacity of my 1.2 white oak trees a year (plus trees for attrition, plus trees for my past carbon dioxide output years), to determine the number of trees I should plant for every year I am likely to continue living on this Earth (which means I will also need to consult some actuarial tables).

    I could.  In theory.