The delusion of meeting the 1.5°C target is based on covering vast areas of the planet in tree plantations

Trading the carbon stored in trees against emissions from burning fossil fuels is insane.

The Paris Agreement aims to keep global temperature increases well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. It was also supposed to “pursue efforts” to keep the temperature increase below 1.5°C.

Peter Kalmus, a climate scientist at NASA, says, “Really, there’s no chance in hell for staying under 1.5°C.” Kalmus argues that the failure to accept that keeping temperatures below 1.5°C is no longer possible is a “sort of delusion”. Not accepting how bad things actually are, “is false hope that impedes real action”.

Of course every fraction of a degree counts. The fact that we’re blowing through the 1.5°C target does not mean we should give up. It makes it even more urgent to take meaningful action to address the climate crisis — by urgently reducing emissions from burning fossil fuels.

Betting on forests

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has various scenarios for achieving the Paris Agreement’s 2°C target. These all rely on keeping existing forests intact (to store and absorb carbon) and vastly increasing the area of land planted with trees.

But the carbon stored in forests is increasingly at risk, because of climate heating, increased wildfires, and deforestation. A new study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) shows that failing to account for forests’ decreasing capacity to absorb CO₂ will make meeting the Paris Agreement targets much more difficult and way more expensive. The paper is titled “Hedging our bet on forest permanence for the economic viability of climate targets”.

Michael Windisch, a guest scientist at PIK is the lead author of the study. In a press statement, Windisch explains that,

“Right now, our climate strategies bet on forests not only remaining intact, but even expanding. However, with escalating like in California, and continued deforestation in the Amazon, that’s a gamble. Climate change itself puts forests’ immense carbon stores at risk.”

The study describes the global plan to address the climate crisis as “a bet on the world’s forests to stay healthy, undisturbed, and productive,” and adds that “a growing body of evidence puts the safety of this bet in question”.

“We must act immediately”

In the press statement, Windisch says that,

“We must act immediately to safeguard the carbon stored in forests. Otherwise, compensating for potential forest carbon losses through steeper emissions cuts in key emission sectors like energy, industry and transport will become increasingly expensive and possibly unattainable.”

Obviously, we need to do both urgently: stop the destruction of the rainforests; and massively reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels. To suggest trading the carbon stored in forests against continued emissions from burning fossil fuels at this stage of the climate crisis would be insane.

Yet that’s exactly what REDD is doing.

Despite the fact that the climate crisis is exacerbating the threat to forests, the PIK study focusses on the need to stop the release of carbon from forests — rather than the need to massively reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels.

PIK’s press statement makes no mention of fossil fuels. Alexander Popp, head of PIK’s Land Use Transition lab is another author of the study. He says that,

“Staying below critical warming thresholds requires more than just hoping forests will remain intact. Alongside protecting forests, it is essential to promote sustainable land use practices – not only to preserve biodiversity but also to avoid drastic economic consequences and to secure our climate future.”

Fossil fuels are mentioned in the study, but only in the context of how much faster fossil-fuelled energy sources will have to be reduced under the different scenarios of forest carbon loss.

The study proposes “immediate, ambitious mitigation action” as “the most effective way to prepare for so-far underexplored consequences of human activity like an increase in forest disturbances”. But rather than proposing rapid, urgent action to reduce the amount of fossil fuel burned, the study looks at how climate targets could be met despite forests’ reduced capacity for storing carbon.

“Vast areas of land”

Perhaps the most extraordinary part of the study is the section on land-use. The study notes that, “Using land-based methods to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, such as BECCS [bioenergy with carbon capture and storage] and A/R [afforestation/reforestation], requires vast areas of land.”

The study uses the SSP2-1.5°C scenario. This is one of five Shared Socioeconomic Pathways defined in the IPCC’s 2021 Sixth Assessment Report. SSP2 is the “middle of the road” scenario, under which “The world follows a path in which social, economic, and technological trends do not shift markedly from historical patterns.” Pretty much business as usual, in other words.

Under the SSP2-1.5°C scenario, 224 million hectares of land is to be used for CO₂ removal up to 2030. That’s a little less than the area of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Or ten times the area of the United Kingdom.

This massive increase in plantation area is combined with a reduction in crop- and pastureland of 247 million hectares, despite a growing world population. The PIK study drily comments that this will create “the need for more efficient agricultural practices”. Or mass starvation.

The study compares two variations on the SSP2-1.5°C scenario. In the first, the “foresighted” policy response, action is taken to reduce the amount of carbon lost from forests. In the second, the “myopic” approach, action is delayed.

By 2050, both variations will require enormous areas of land for “mitigation”, which in reality will consist of vast tree plantations. Under the foresighted approach 542 million hectares will be needed, and in the myopic approach 563 million hectares. That’s more than 70% of the land area of Australia.