In this episode of La Loupe, Xavier Yvon explains this phenomenon with Baptiste Langlois, journalist in the Climate and Transition department of L’Express and Philippe Ciais, research director at the laboratory of climate and environmental sciences at the University of Versailles. -Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines.
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The team: Xavier Yvon (presentation), Mathias Penguilly (writing), Ambre Rosala (editing), Jules Krot (directing) and Marion Galard (alternate).
Credits: Engie, France 3, Laforêt, Telma
Music and dressing: Emmanuel Herschon/Studio Torrent
Picture credits: Pascal Pochard Casabianca/AFP
Logo: Anne-Laure Chapelain/Benjamin Chazal
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Xavier Yvon: To offset our carbon emissions, there is a very simple – not to say simplistic – solution that we are hammered at length in advertisements.
Extract of advertisement : “Your purchase has a power… Telma launches the operation: a telephone = a tree… A program for the reforestation of Madagascar.”
Xavier Yvon : All companies are doing it. DIY stores, textile or cosmetics brands, electricity producers… and even a network of real estate agencies, which lives up to its name.
Extract of advertisement : “Laforêt is part of a group of partners who, since 2010, have planted 4 million trees.”
Extract of advertisement : “And 5 trees planted for any subscription to an account… I act with ENGIE.”
Xavier Yvon : For this, these companies form partnerships with other organizations that have made tree planting their specialty.
TV news clip : “Reforest’action is a reforestation company. Our job is to plant forests or replant degraded forests in Ile-de-France, in France and around the world in more than 25 countries.”
Xavier Yvon : It is also possible to use a search engine that reforests each of your requests… And the most committed consumers can even offer a friend “the planting of a tree” in a local forest as a birthday present.
All these proposals are based on a basic postulate: a tree absorbs a certain quantity of carbon. What they do not say, however, is that the capacity of a forest to capture this CO2 varies according to different factors, and that in France, it tends to decrease very quickly… at the risk of restoring cause the whole strategy to achieve our climate goals.
Can we really depend on trees to offset our greenhouse gas emissions? That’s the question we’re looking at today.
For further
PODCAST. How climate change will transform French forests by 2050
Forest fires: is France ready for another high-risk summer?
At the ONF, burnout, small savings and the climate revolution
Recreating a primary forest in France, sweet dream or necessity?