To answer original point: The trees/carbon offsets, in Australia largely come from the Federal Govt’s ban on land clearing native vegetation.

In fact to meet Kyoto all we had to do was stop land clearing in QLD. So our farmers pay for it with lost productivity and land degradation cos they cant establish a proper secessional phase in land that has, through past misuse, gone to woody weeds (acacias etc) and is not subject to a sensible fire regime (its mostly illegal / socially unacceptable to burn off nowadays too) that would otherwise control their growth and stimulate the grassland ecosystems that are the best for depleted Aussie soils.

Carbon offsets are also generated through renewable energy production or changes to current methods that reduce measurable carbon emissions either in Australia or overseas through Kyoto’s “joint initiatives” scheme.

Forestry is interesting. We “sequester” carbon in our trees but largely they are chipped and sent overseas where the carbon is emitted by another country and goes on their carbon account, thus we are offsetting carbon with creative accounting.

Its damm complicated.

With reference to your tree:

What do you do with it once its cut down?

Use it as fire wood? No good carbon goes back into atmosphere

Make furniture / house? Better by a long way as the carbon is locked up and being put to other uses but it all goes back out eventually.

Fundamentally I think its about a massive social change that shifts the mode of production from a straight pipe from factory to landfill to what’s known as industrial ecology

This is where the outputs of one process feed the input of another process, like trees growing over a pond that drop leaves that feed insects that feed fish that die and feed bacteria who feed different insects who pollinate trees who drop leaves that feed insects who feed fish.

You know the circle of life…

Simba one day this will all be yours!

Till then I still want an iPad and I love steak!!!

I’m not a doomsayer, this planet will be just fine once we poison ourselves to death and life will continue until the next organism rises to prominence and it all happens again.