NYT: Forests No Longer Effective Climate Allies

The NYT argues that forests are no longer "climate friends"

An opinion piece in The New York Times claims that forests have ceased to be allies against CO2 and that their status as carbon sinks belongs to a stable climate that no longer exists. The text is behind a paywall, so many readers have only seen the headline and summary. That was enough to spark a debate mixing science, business, and suspicion about who pays the bill.

The thesis rests on an uncomfortable argument attributed to the author: "There is a comforting myth that our vast forest offsets part of our emissions. It might have been true decades ago, in our old, stable climate. But we have weakened the forest so much that it has started releasing CO2 instead of absorbing it." From this, an operational conclusion is drawn: climate policy should stop counting on trees as accounting assets.

Why might a mature forest not absorb CO2?

The most repeated technical objection in the thread is that a mature forest does not function as a net sink. According to that argument, a tree absorbs CO2 while growing, but sooner or later it dies, rots, or burns, and the accumulated carbon returns to the atmosphere: the balance evens out. What actually moves the needle is expanding the tree-covered area: where there were no trees, there is now new plant mass with captured carbon inside.

On that basis, it is argued that a meadow, a crop field, or a plankton bloom fix carbon faster than a forest, because primary productivity — photosynthesis minus respiration — is higher and trees grow slowly. The nuance matters: the discussion is not whether trees capture carbon, but how long they retain it and at what opportunity cost.

Spain adds two million hectares of forest in twenty years

Against the narrative of forests weakened by climate change, Iberian data appears. Spanish forest area has grown by some 2 million hectares in the last 20 years, according to Tragsa figures, and the accumulated forest mass over three decades nearly doubles the starting point. The nuance highlighted is quality: these would not be eucalyptus replantings, but recovered woodland since serious care began in the eighties.

The critical reading holds that this effort has been abandoned and that it is now more convenient to attribute to climate change what was previously forestry policy. If the Spanish forest grows just as the climate warms, the cause-and-effect relationship in the headline needs many more pages than the summary offers.

Bill Gates, felling, and burying trees

Another piece joins the issue: information published by PJ Media attributes to Bill Gates the promotion of felling and burying millions of trees. The interpretation from the financial world is that Gates makes money with anything, useful or harmful, and that the forest matter is just another line in his portfolio.

In the background is the question of who gets paid. Every euro that industry, agriculture, and aviation pay for their emissions reverts, according to this premise, into studies and projects to reduce CO2. If the forest ceases to count as a sink, the offset market reorganizes and a new business line emerges.

Is CO2 at historic lows?

One current of analysis holds that the problem is not CO2 itself. Current levels would be at the lower end of the planet's historical series, and plants evolved to perform with concentrations far higher than today's. From that perspective, more CO2 would not be a climate threat, but an input for vegetation.

The objection raised against that argument is one of scale: the balance of a forest, whose life is measured in decades or centuries, cannot simply be transferred to geological contexts of hundreds of thousands or millions of years. Confusing one scale with another, critics say, only generates noise.

From climate to ecosystems: the disorienting argument

The harshest criticism is not against CO2, but against reducing the forest to a carbon counter. A forest supports biodiversity, retains water and releases it slowly, blocks wind, and takes centuries to form. Measuring it solely by its emission balance, it is argued, is confusing the asset with the bank statement.

The analogy thrown around is that of Easter Island: a society that exhausted its environment and had nowhere to return. Others elevate the issue to a book of geological history — seven recorded glaciations — and recall that the climate has changed without human intervention. Consensus is lacking, and there the conversation stops.

---

The disorienting fact remains: while the headline insists that trees are the enemy, Spain's tree-covered area has been growing for two decades. No one has yet explained why that increase does not appear in the equation.