For twenty years, the boss of the world travelers agency Jean-François Rial has read everything he can find on the climate. It is even one of the few people to have traveled all IPCC reports. In his book entitled Climate chaos is not inevitable (The archipelago), written with four hands with the consultant and former CSR director of Orange Matthieu Belloir, this close to Emmanuel Macron advances an incongruous idea: planting trees by billions, everywhere on the planet, for ten years. The only way, according to them, to save the time necessary to achieve a fair and effective ecological transition.
L’Express: How was this idea of using trees as a temporary carbon well born to facilitate transition?
Jean-François Rial: This book is above all a rant against the inaction and the ineffectiveness of climate action. Year after year, we make commitments on the occasion of grandmates organized on the climate, then these commitments slip, slip because they are not adapted to the reality of the situation. You have to face things. With the COVID epidemic, we attended a drop in CO2 emissions in 2022. But this respite was short -lived: the figures left up in 2023 and 2024. We therefore sought how we could organize ourselves concretely to follow the trajectories mentioned in the GIEC reports. To do this, the work of Professor Tom Crowther, from the Swiss University Eth Zurich, have inspired us a lot.
What do this work say?
That 900 billion trees could be planted without touching urban or agricultural areas. Added to the current forests, these trees would have the capacity to kidnap 205 carbon gigatons – or 750 tonnes of CO2 -, “a little less than a third of all programs from human activities that remain in the atmosphere”, researchers.
By being inspired by these calculations, which have been the subject of attentive scientific rereading without being denied, we imagined a scenario in which the world plants 18 billion additional trees per year, over a decade. About twice as much as we plant on average each year. This additional carbon well, which is roughly the size of Mexico or three times France, would naturally reduce and one third the annual CO2 reduction efforts provided by 2050. And if we want to decrease the ‘Effort of 50%, you can increase to 250 billion trees. In one case as in the other, we would save precious time to develop green technologies for energy production and storage. The maturity of these solutions would then accelerate the drop in emissions around 2050 and join the trajectories calculated by the IPCC, to reach carbon neutrality around 2075.
This time saved is therefore an opportunity to truly decarbonize the aviation sector on which your activity rests?
Indeed, the idea of this plan is to accompany what is already being done. Above all, we must not lose sight of our objectives. However, we must remain lucid: some sectors are more difficult to decarbonize than others. Air for example. In the future, electric or hydrogen planes will undoubtedly be useful, but in a marginal way, over relatively short distances and small market segments. The real solution is the development of synthetic fuels, that is to say fuels produced in an artificial way from non-fossil sources. The manufacturing process is mainly based on the combination of hydrogen and carbon dioxide with electricity from renewable sources. In theory, it’s great. In practice, it is much more complicated. Synthesis fuel costs six times more than kerosene.
Finally, to ensure the supply of the global fleet in this way, it would be necessary to use about and a half once the quantity of green electricity currently available on a planet! It is obviously not possible. Faced with these difficulties, some wish to ban the plane or, like Jean-Marc Jancovici, establish a quota of flights for each individual. I prefer the idea of a taxation of kerosene and the massive absorption of carbon by trees to allow the plane to continue to exist, without questioning the national and international climatic objectives.
Isn’t being able to count on a new carbon well not likely to promote procrastination?
Our intention is good to remain faithful to the Paris Agreements and therefore reach carbon neutrality as soon as possible. The final objective is preserved. It is the path that is different. This redevelopment should therefore not encourage to slow down the efforts to lower emissions. In addition, let’s not forget that the CO2 storage capacity of trees slows around forty years. So we cannot afford to miss the appointment. Let us remain optimistic: we can reasonably hope that in twenty-five years, we will have managed to limit our emissions, to develop less energy-consuming technologies, to go to scale electricity storage solutions, to massively deploy renewable energies in Complement of nuclear programs, and above all, we can hope that we had time to adopt more sober lifestyles in energy.
How much would this global effort in reforestation cost?
That we are not told that it is expensive! The cost of planting a tree is estimated at $ 1 in developing countries and $ 5 in developed countries. If we plant 50 % of these 180 billion trees in southern countries and 50 % in developed countries, the average cost per tree will be 3 dollars, an overall cost of $ 540 billion. This sum would barely represent 0.5 % of the world’s GDP to pay at once. By spreading this budget over ten years, the annual cost reported to world GDP would be 0.05 %. An effort very largely within our reach. Let us not forget that, according to the calculations of the IPCC, a warming of 2 ° C could lead to a loss of 2 to 4 % of world GDP by 2050, and up to 10 %, or even more, for scenarios of higher warming at 3 ° C or 4 ° C.
More than 50 % of the restoration potential is concentrated in six countries: Russia, the United States, Canada, Australia, Brazil and China. How to coordinate efforts between these states whose point of view on the climate sometimes dives strongly from ours?
We don’t need Donald Trump to start setting up this system! In the United States, cities are owners of a lot of land and are very committed to the climate. If we will see the mayors and tell them that we are going to finance trees on their grounds, there is a safe bet that they will accept. For its part, China is already planting a lot. If we tell him that we will help him accelerate, we will certainly find an agreement. Of course, it is necessary to plant where the needs are felt: in the semi-desert areas of Africa and much less in Europe where the forests gain ground. It will also be necessary to respect some rules of common sense. First of all, the species selected must be adapted to climatic developments for the next fifty years. Then the monoculture is to be avoided. It is at the origin of the fire of Fort McMurray in Canada, which ravaged 600,000 hectares in 2016 and caused $ 7.4 billion in damage, a drama largely attributable to the massive plantation of black spruce, At the origin of the disappearance of peat bogs which stored humidity. In France, remember that in 2022, 30,000 hectares of Gironde maritime pines left for smoke during the summer.
Who could bring this project internationally?
It may be the most difficult to solve. We will undoubtedly need an agile structure, to which would nevertheless be granted a mission delegation entrusted by an international body like the UN. At its head, a very media personality and on the ground, a dozen entrepreneurs dedicated to this mission to cover the whole world. A Xavier Niel here, a Jeff Bezos there … I rather see people in the private sector to advance this project and seek investors. Because even if reforestation projects have flowered everywhere in recent years, they are not coordinated and do not arouse great interest from investors. There is a paradox there. The tech sector is in no way struggling to find staggering funding for projects whose profitability is sometimes chimerical – 3D television yesterday, Theranos today, the metarers tomorrow?
Recently, the United States has announced an investment of $ 3.5 billion to develop four CO2 direct capturing places in the atmosphere. As part of the Initiative Frontier project, companies like Stripe, Alphabet, Shopify, Meta and McKinsey have already planned to buy $ 925 million in carbon credits from these capture technologies. And companies like Microsoft have created funds for climate innovation, investing in these “CO2 vacuums” to compensate for their own emissions. Part of these colossal efforts could usefully redirect towards reforestation.
Will you talk to Emmanuel Macron?
Why not ? Planting trees is not the panacea. But this mission becomes crucial for our future. Do we have at our disposal a better option to activate immediately to save the time necessary for the advent of energy, ecological and societal transitions? We don’t think so. Like the former American vice-president Al Gore, politicians have successfully retrained in climate action. Emmanuel Macron could also engage on this path by taking the lead in world reforestation. But I’m not sure he accepts.
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