Aravind V

Let's put the environmental impact of 4,000 trees in context. What is the one-time loss of carbon sequestration? Himalayan forests usually have around 0.5-1.5 tons of carbon sequestered in itself and the soil. Culling all 4k would release around 2k - 6k tons of carbon dioxide. Let's take a average figure of around 4k tons of CO2 for this standing stock. How much do these trees reduce carbon annually? That's approximately 0.01 tons of carbon dioxide per tree. So that's around 40 tons of carbon dioxide that they reduce per year additionally. Let's round this to about 100 tons of CO2. So total emissions = 4,000 tons of CO2 release one time + 100 tons/year recurring. And let's go through some emission facts: 1. India emits around 3.3 billion tons of CO2 per year. The full standing stock of 4k tons is exhausted in 30 seconds of emissions. 2. That comes out to a 2 tons of CO2 emitted per capita. 1500 Indians will consume the entire standing stock in one year. 3. Punjab's paddy burning amounts to about 30 million tons in 45 days. This consumes the standing stock in 7 minutes. 4. 1 GW coal unit emits about 6 million tons of CO2 a year. So basically 5 hours of operations will be equal to 4k tons of CO2. There's more numbers I could pull out, but I hope I got you the gist of it. Assume that there's a better road constructed after cutting down the trees that eliminates a 20km detour. That detour carries around 2000 vehicles and emits an average of 250g of CO2/km. So that eliminates around 2000 * 20 * 0.25kg * 365 = 3650 tons of CO2/year. So the entire carbon sequestration of the 4000 trees is taken care of in one year. And these are calculations with conservative numbers! I hope I got the point across. Environmentalism must not come at the cost of development. Whatever your underlying philosophy is, if it loves trees in spite of this, then you are mathematically illiterate as well as anti-poor.