As the climate crisis intensifies, that ability has made them controversial: How much can we rely on trees to get us out of this mess?
Dr. Crowther was the senior author of a polarizing study on forest carbon in 2019 that drew scientific backlash but also inspired an effort by the World Economic Forum to grow and conserve one trillion trees.
In 2019, he acknowledged, careless language led to trees being wrongly painted as a silver bullet for climate change.
“We are all terrified that this potential of nature gets misused,” Dr. Crowther said.
“Nature has such spectacular potential to help us tackle global threats, but it will be devastating if major organizations use nature as an excuse to do more harm to our planet.”
Persons:
Thomas Crowther, Crowther, Dr
Organizations:
ETH Zurich, World
Locations:
Switzerland