Climate Change Basics: Stopping Deforestation

Did you know that deforestation accounts for about 15 percent of global carbon emissions?  That’s about the same amount emitted by every car, bus and truck on the road right now—in the entire world.  Really!

Trees are cool for many reasons (hello, shade!).  One of their neatest tricks is their ability to absorb carbon dioxide, which helps keep our air clean and reduce the amount of climate-changing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

But when forests are destroyed, all that stored carbon seeps back into the air, and fewer intact forests mean fewer trees to suck it up again.

That’s why it’s important to support a structure and incentives for significantly reducing deforestation globally. Already, organizations like The Nature Conservancy are managing dozens of projects that test these concepts, and store an estimated million tons of carbon in the process (that’s like taking 150,000 cars off the road).

(image: Morning mist in the forest of East Kalimantan, Indonesia. Mark Godfrey/The Nature Conservancy)