Select to expand quoteMr Milk said..Chris 249 said..
I didn't see this earlier, but I may as well say now that you're wrong. We don't need to adopt a third world lifestyle. We can get on a plane and pay extra so our carbon is offset (which we do). We can have a pool. We can own an ICU car etc as long as we offset the carbon use (which we do by growing dozens of trees on our property). We can stop eating meat, which we did decades ago. All of that significantly reduces our impact; in fact we (my wife and I) are having a positive impact by growing dozens of trees.
Modern technology allows us to do many things without living a third world lifestyle. Even cutting down our purchasing of new cars, new boats etc can cause a dramatic reduction in our personal greenhouse gas emissions, and driving a 10 year old 4 cylinder instead of a 2020 6 cylinder is not like living in the third world.
But isn't there an argument to be made that offsetting by planting trees is just virtue signalling in itself? Those trees are only replacing trees that were existing there 100 or so years ago. The carbon that they lock up as they grow is the carbon that was released when the previous trees were removed and will itself be released when the new trees mature, die and rot, or get harvested and turned into timber which might last a while but eventually rot. It doesn't affect the increase in atmospheric CO2 due to fossil fuels in the long run.
And rich people using land to grow lifestyle crops like carbon offsets tends to force 3rd world people to grow food on ever more marginal land.
If we did what the previous owners did and mow the trees, there would be a couple of hundred fewer trees to lock up the carbon. Our actions have directly increased the number of trees, and we will do what we can to ensure that when they die they will be replaced. Therefore lots of carbon has been locked up pretty well, and as far as we can do so.
Since the land has not been used for crops ever as far as we can find out - it used to be used for meat cattle which create significant Co2 - bringing the trees back will not affect the third world.
The point is that it's not a choice between living a third world lifestyle on the one hand, and stuffing the planet on the other. We can live great lives on significantly reduced carbon footprints.
