Climate change has accelerated the rate of ice loss across the continent.
Tropical tree cover alone can provide 23 percent of the climate mitigation needed to meet goals set in the Paris Agreement in 2015, according to one estimate.Īn iceberg melts in the waters off Antarctica. Aggressive efforts to rewild and reforest are already showing success. An estimated 60 percent of emerging infectious diseases come from animals, and a major cause of viruses’ jump from wildlife to humans is habitat loss, often through deforestation.īut we can still save our forests. There is also the imminent danger of disease caused by deforestation. As those gases enter the atmosphere, global warming increases, a trend scientists now prefer to call climate change. We need trees for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that they absorb the carbon dioxide we exhale and the heat-trapping greenhouse gases that human activities emit.
Yet the mass destruction of trees-deforestation-continues, sacrificing the long-term benefits of standing trees for short-term gain of fuel, and materials for manufacturing and construction. As the world seeks to slow the pace of climate change, preserve wildlife, and support more than eight billion people, trees inevitably hold a major part of the answer.
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