The beauty of trees is partly why, whenever we talk about building carbon sinks, we focus on them.
Trees are the forms of natural CO2-capture that we can see — that we admire. The idea of reforesting the planet makes immediate sense. As does fiercely protecting the old-growth we’ve got left. Indeed, protecting those existing old trees is particularly crucial: There’s an increasing amount of science that suggests really old trees are tentpoles of the flora and fauna around them, hubs in the ecological network of a forest. Younger trees don’t fulfill those central roles.