Shell boss says mass reforestation needed to limit temperature rises to 1.5C

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Shell boss says mass reforestation needed to limit temperature rises to 1.5C

Ben van Beurden says ‘another Brazil in terms of rainforest’ will help achieve UN target

Adam Vaughan
Tue 9 Oct 2018 18.35 BST Last modified on Tue 9 Oct 2018 20.35 BST

The boss of Shell has said a huge tree-planting project the size of the Amazon rainforest would be needed to meet a tougher global warming target, as he argued more renewable energy alone would not be enough.

Ben van Beurden said it would be a major challenge to limit temperature rises to 1.5C (equivalent to a rise of 2.7F), which a landmark report from the UN’s climate science panel has said will be necessary to avoid dangerous warming.

“You can get to 1.5C, but not by just by pulling the same levers a little bit harder, because they are being pulled roughly as fast and and as hard as we are currently imagining. What we think can be done is massive reforestation. Think of another Brazil in terms of rainforest: you can get to 1.5C,” he told an oil and gas industry audience in London.

“It’s not what some people sometimes think: we’ll just do a little bit more solar, a bit more wind and we’ll get there,” he added.

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But the Shell chief executive was adamant that gas, which makes up a growing share of the firm’s portfolio, would have have a role to play in a 1.5C world.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/oct/09/shell-ben-van-beurden-mass-reforestation-un-climate-change-target

[msongs]

1. design everything so we need NO shell products. that oughta do it nt

[hatrack]

2. That's nice - maybe Shell can start in the Niger Delta . . .

[NickB79]

3. Tall grass prairie can sequester more carbon than forests, FYI

Cap the Ogallala aquifer and convert the central US back to bluestem grasses and buffalo.

[NNadir]

4. That, and a few hundred million years. n/t.