Large-scale tree planting can remove some CO2 from the atmosphere, but nowhere near as much as humans add by extracting and burning fossil fuels. See https://skepticalscience.com/1-trillion-trees-impact.html for a detailed assessment of what this looks like.
The IPCC has a chart showing what actions need to be taken over the next few years. Afforestation is one piece of many things, all of which we need to do.
If conservatives (or dems) were smart they’d lean hard into something like the CCC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_Conservation_Corps?wprov=sfla1
Teach young people life skills, lift a whole generation out of poverty, plant and manage forests, fix up our infrastructure… So much could be done. A modern, environment-focused CCC would be revolutionary, and I would bet whoever runs with some form of that idea first sweeps the following elections.
It was proposed as part of the Green New Deal but hasn’t been able to meaningful funding through the Senate. Too many Republicans working with a handful of bought-off Democrats
I didn’t know that! Neat. I hope it stays a part of the conversation.
We actually had that through the VISTA and Americorps programs in the 90s and early 2000s (I believe Americorps is still around). I was a volunteer for VISTA in 2003, just as the Bush Administration shredded the program. They signed us up on the promise that our student loans would have their payments covered while we volunteered, then refused to deliver for six months. It wasn’t until then Senator Hillary Clinton got involved that they reversed their decision, and by that time I and half the class were forced by financial reasons to drop out of the program. The living stipend they gave us was only $740 a month, and we were forbidden to take outside jobs. Throw student loan payments on top of that and there was no way to survive.
The Bush admin knew this, and they continued to dismantle the program, using the disastrous drop-out rates of the class of 2003 as an excuse for further cuts. VISTA is now gone, and with it the specific part of Americorps that was focused on poverty relief.
The reason we don’t have these programs anymore is because the conservatives have deliberately dismantled them, not because the left hasn’t tried again and again to use government towards building real value in our society.
My favorite part about history is learning how conservatives fucked up things that used to be good.
We should really just call them regressives because that is what they are.
I’ve been saying this for years. It never should have stopped but the Republicans are hell bent on destroying anything good that the government can do for us.