The Jist The Jist Of June | Page 15

Trees Are The Most Cost Effective Way To Fight Air Pollution and The Effects Of Climate Change Reforestation is often dis- missed as a realistic way of fighting climate change, the scale of co-ordinated planning and resources required is con- sidered to be much too large and almost impossible to achieve in a realistic time scale. In 2000, a special re- port on the effects of tree planting found that trees could remove around 1.1–1.6 billion tonnes of CO2 per year from the atmosphere - which would only put a small dent in our yearly emissions. However, whilst planting trees is still an important part of reducing the amount of Co2 in our atmos- phere, planting them in cities is one of the most effective ways to combat pollution and the ef- fects of climate change. Since air pollution in London (and 15