[jsantos511]

The short answer is that we absolutely need more trees than we currently have, but trees alone won't be able to get us there.

Trees are great at capturing CO2 from the sky, but they suffer from an impermanence issue. Trees capture CO2 for the duration of their lifespan, but when they die, they decompose and release that captured CO2 back into the atmosphere. They also require dedicated use of large swaths of land to get to significant capture amounts.

More info can be found at section 3.2 of this report: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aabf9f

[monopoledance]

I don't think this is the complete picture. In an intact old forest, a lot of bio-matter doesn't decompose in time, but rather gets buried in the anaerobic zone. In a healthy forest the first few centimeter soil are so biologically active just about 30cm down there is very little oxygen left to house much life. That's also why murder victims don't decompose very fast, when the murderer buried them deep in forest soil.

Granted this still depends on the forest's life, but it is beyond an individual tree's lifecycle.

[ip26]

I think it's pretty easy to see, though, that restoring the world's forests to their condition circa 1700 will not get us to 1700 CO2 levels, as we have added some 1.5T tons of fossil carbon to the mix since then.

[ficklepickle]

And a few billion humans, the cause of this mess. It brings me peace to know the world will be fine without us.