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by tmaly 2546 days ago
I think trying to slow the cutting of trees would also help.

How many Christmas trees are cut down every year? I bought a synthetic tree many years ago, and I just keep using that to save on killing a tree every year.

2 comments

You can also look at this the other way round:

By buying a Christmas tree, you create a market for those trees which makes people plant them. This leads to several generations of trees growing at any time, so that there is a net-reduction of CO2.

To make the reduction permanent however, the ultimate fate of all those Christmas trees is important. That market also entails more (fuel burning) economic activity surrounding Christmas and transportation of those trees. If they are disposed of in such a way as to be decomposed by microbes, much of the carbon returns to the environment. It's very hard to store carbon in a more permanent way than deep underground, which was where it was before we foolishly started pulling it all up and burning it.
The Christmas Tree Carbon Question is more complicated than you might think.

https://www.sightline.org/2015/12/21/your-christmas-trees-ca...

The tl;dr is that usually cut trees are better in terms of carbon footprint, but not always.