From Chris Webster
Daniel Boyd points out the impracticality of carbon offsets that would demand 625 square kilometres of newly planted trees to offset emissions for a mere 50,000 people (7 April, p 20). An alternative might be to expand the carbon offset market to preserve as well as create forests. Tropical rainforests are being cleared at a terrifying rate leading to habitat loss, extinction of species, carbon emissions through uncontrolled burning and, of course, the removal of future carbon sinks.
If the fashion for carbon offsets could be diverted into buying, preserving and perhaps even expanding forests at risk, then we might begin to address more than one desperately urgent problem at the same time.
Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, UK
