Calling for any hard core environmental scientists who might happen to read this site. Back when i was taking a human geography course a decade ago, i recall seeing some maps of forestation in the US from 1850, and then present day. From those, we had deforested almost 2/3rds of the natural forest during that timeframe.
My question is, how much does this impact the ability of the earth to combat climate change through the natural process of converting CO2 to O2? Am i crazy in thinking that the first thing that we ought to do, and start today, is a national (ideally global) reforestation project? Would this have an impact on Terra’s ability to regulate atmospheric temperature and combat climate change by preventing the greenhouse effect? Are there other plants that would perform this better than trees? Am i missing something and this is a stupid idea?
Thank you for any insights that can be provided...