[nimish]

I wonder if it wouldn't be simpler to just sponsor forests instead. Plants have already mastered solar powered carbon capture and sequestration, of course. There's a lot of other positive externalities to increasing green cover in populated areas that this system unfortunately cannot replicate.

[rgmerk]

The short answer is "no".

Carbon offset schemes that involve planting trees or, even worse, not chopping down trees, are notorious for the additionality problem. Much of the time, the payments are made to plant trees that would have been planted anyway.

The second problem that these schemes have is accurate measurement. This is particularly the case for "soil carbon" rather than forestry, but it's still true for forestry. All the incentives are to overestimate the amount of CO2 sequestered.

The third problem these schemes have is permanence on geological timescales. Let's say you buy land to regrow rainforest in a developing country. Then there's a coup and the new government decides that a quick buck flogging off the timber is more important than contracts signed under the old legal system?

[palata]

Well, at least forests are good for biodiversity, whereas CO2 removal technologies are just completely useless (except for the techno-solutionist cult).

[hedora]

The planet isn’t big enough for that to work. Forests simply don’t capture enough carbon per square foot per year.

Even if they did, where would you store the wood?

[hobs]

And then they rot within a year or so, most carbon capture cannot happen through trees unless we bury them under the ground for a couple thousand years.

[nonethewiser]

I think you wood need to make new forests.