this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2025
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[–] Peppycito@sh.itjust.works 30 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

Some day I'd like to hear about a forest twice the size of London getting planted without there being a gigantic airport built.

[–] YungOnions@lemmy.world 4 points 11 hours ago

*https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/press-centre/2024/09/biggest-ever-tree-planting-year-for-northern-forest/

Some key figures from the 2024 Forestry research summary:

https://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/publications/forestry-facts-figures-2024/

  • There are now 3.28 million hectares of woodland in the UK (as of March 2024)

  • Woodland area in the UK now represents 13.5% of total land area

  • 20,660 hectares of new woodland were created in the UK in 2023/24 (compared to 12,960 in 22/23)

  • There was a 59% increase in new planting and 28% increase in restocking in the UK in 2023/24

Hopefully that'll make you feel slightly happier :)

[–] ALiteralCabbage 2 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah but, how can you squeeze profit from that?

[–] Redderthanmisty@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 16 hours ago

Charge people for breathing oxygen, like that one Dr who episode.

[–] wewbull 21 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Increasing airport size as a way to stimulate economic growth seems like dated thinking to me. Flights are increasingly not used for business travel as communications technology has advanced. All you're really doing is trying to maintain hub status for London which doesn't drive economic activity outside of the airport industry.

Heathrow needs a third runway as much as it needs a rollercoaster. A huge construction project, with all the emissions that brings, that paves over houses, green spaces and the M25 (on a bridge).

Finally, I guess we can see why Labour whipped against the environment bill last week.

[–] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 1 day ago

if only there was some painfully obvious and immortal way to stimulate economic growth, like idk.. building housing and factories with public transport connecting the two..

oh right shit i forgot, that would annoy the real estate investors in london, can't do that.

[–] BrightCandle@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago

The level of production of CO2 is so vast that planting trees is not going to do anything meaningful. We need to sharply and rapidly stop producing CO2 immediately and work on viable scalable CO2 removal and storage methods with urgency.

[–] JohnSmith 10 points 1 day ago

The depth of climate crisis denial is depressing. We should be cutting drastically down on flying. We should be cutting drastically down on miles driven in cars. Nope, none of that.

[–] Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago (2 children)

The rationale of electric planes is unhinged. "We're going to plan to expend energy as if future technology has already been implemented".

[–] kralk@lemm.ee 4 points 1 day ago

Straight out of the David Cameron "carbon capture" playbook

[–] wewbull 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

An electric plane will expend similar levels of energy to a jet plane.

[–] Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

That's beside my point, considering that all commercial electric aircraft being developed are basically all at or near the "announced plans to develop" stage and they're already talking about expanding airports using these erstwhile emissions savings as a rationale. It would be more honest to say they don't actually give a damn about the climate.

[–] wewbull 2 points 17 hours ago

Ok, I see where you're coming from and agree.

[–] ddash@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 day ago

Haven't we debunked the offsetting as useful? There was a lot of fraud going on in that space as well.