Wood as a carbon neutral biofuel

[artis]

Moderator’s note: discussion spun off from https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/the-nuclear-power-thread.9091/page-43#post-6558385

Sometimes I don't understand the Germans, so technically advanced and forward thinking and yet somehow willing to abandon logic on this one.
Their alternative is cut more trees and burn more wood chips in cogeneration stations , then plant new trees and burn them again in this way "supposedly" emitting the carbon and then sucking it back up via trees, but in reality there is always more carbon emitted than sucked up not to mention the low power of these plants compared to large scale reactors.

Pardon to any Germans in this chat but I really hope they don't make this dumb decision to shut down good plants for nothing, that would be idiotic.
I can understand discussion before new plants are built but closing good existing ones is somewhat like throwing out food , but then again we do that also so...

 

[Dale]

but in reality there is always more carbon emitted than sucked up

I would say it more that under current practices that is true, but it is not necessarily true in a future practice. The logging, transport, processing, and other similar activities currently use fossil fuels, but in principle that could all be done with electrical power generated by the very power stations that are being fueled. Then it would all be "fresh" carbon. There would be less net power, but the power that is generated would indeed be carbon neutral.

I do agree though, if they are serious about reducing carbon emissions then shutting down nuclear power is counterproductive. We need rather to be ramping up nuclear power.

 

[artis]

I would say it more that under current practices that is true, but it is not necessarily true in a future practice. The logging, transport, processing, and other similar activities currently use fossil fuels, but in principle that could all be done with electrical power generated by the very power stations that are being fueled. Then it would all be "fresh" carbon. There would be less net power, but the power that is generated would indeed be carbon neutral.

Yes true but there is a problem, wood is not very energy dense so to speak, if we wanted to power our electricity needs from wood burning the amount of trees we would need would just not match up with the rate at which they grow not to mention we are having less forests due to agriculture and urbanization.
Even though wood is a renewable source I'm pretty certain it can't keep up with this level of need.
Not to mention the countless other uses for wood that take a lot of wood.

I myself believe the only viable long term energy source for a power hungry post modern world is something that is small in it's footprint and powerful without the reliance on entire continents for it;s energy source like wood for example.
We have hydro which is good, we can burn some wood, have some wind , solar etc , but we must have a stable source to fill the gap, and that can't be coal as it is now for many places. Natural gas can be kept as a reserve but one cannot rely on it as a stable future alternative given it also emits Co2 and it's extraction does so too +methane which is far worse.
Although I myself hate academic dogmas and religious science attitudes I have to say I cannot see a future without nuclear, at least not if we talk physics instead of wishful thinking much of which is modern politics.

Germans seem to have fallen for this wishful thinking nonsense, a country like Germany should really know better.

I don't want to go offroad with my rambling here but EU is also to blame, their scare from nuclear began even before Fukushima. Back in the early 2000, they literally pushed Lithuania to abandon their two Ignalina 1500MWe reactors which were operational and had years to go.
That was part of their deal with joining the EU, closing the two RBMK 1500 blocks. The simple reasoning was something like this - they were afraid of anything Russian and Chernobyl related, a very unscientific stance.
Even though the RBMK's after Chernobyl were retrofitted and monitored more closely than a top security federal prison. The Lithuanian reactors were operating without flaws, they were good to go.
When they operated they provided some 98% of all energy for that country, they were the greenest on planet topping France. My country was second after neighboring Lithuania but only thanks to our huge reliance on Hydro.

Germans have western reactors that are very safe , closing them for no reason other than "Greta's wishlist" or "we fear the reaper" would be very very idiotic.

Not to mention the fact that the amount of time, energy and resources needed to dismantle a nuclear plant is so vast that doing so before the end of the useful station life is just absurd ,

 

[Dale]

Although I myself hate academic dogmas and religious science attitudes I have to say I cannot see a future without nuclear, at least not if we talk physics instead of wishful thinking much of which is modern politics.

I agree. I am also not a big fan of wood based power, largely for the reasons you state. I see wood and forests as being more valuable for carbon sequestration than for power. But in principle I agree with the premise that wood "could" be a carbon neutral source.

My "magic wand" wish list would be to shut down coal plants, and replace with additional nuclear, add additional capacity as wind and solar, transition existing natural gas plants to biogas and biomethane, heavily incentivize carbon sequestration in agriculture (regenerative agriculture), and make anaerobic digesters almost ubiquitous in agricultural regions. Also, substantial improvements to the grid to support more distributed generation from solar and smaller generators associated with digesters.

 

[artis]

@Dale Well I think another reason why wood is really not a good carbon neutral option is because it has so many other uses and more importantly we need to conserve forests for a million different reasons like wildlife , biodiversity , bird species, oxygen , and also very importantly for our psychological benefit, humans just need some place that is natural and lonely ,otherwise we risk making everything a concrete jungle.

As for agriculture I guess if we could completely decarbonize our energy supply and transportation then agriculture alone would not disable our carbon neutrality.
Sure enough making agriculture greener also gives a benefit like collecting methane from farming and then using it to burn at a gas plant to make electricity.
But I feel we won't be able to do this because we can't do the most important part which is energy generation. Our only current option is fission power plants and I just don't see how all of coal and oil and gas will be replaced by those. It could in theory but not in practice.
And without us ending coal energy production I don't see the full benefit of having all EV cars. Yes large fossil plants are more efficient than small engines but still.
I did a short calculation some time ago to see how much energy it would require extra to the grid if all vehicles were suddenly electric and basically at least for my country it would require about twice the current grid capacity.

 

[Dale]

I think another reason why wood is really not a good carbon neutral option is because it has so many other uses

I agree. In fact, I see those other options as being much more effective at sequestering carbon. The more lumber we can grow and then turn into durable products, the more carbon we sequester from the atmosphere.

I am enjoying this conversation, but it probably isn’t a good fit with the nuclear power thread so I will split it to its own thread.

 

[Astronuc]

Well I think another reason why wood is really not a good carbon neutral option is because it has so many other uses and more importantly we need to conserve forests for a million different reasons like wildlife , biodiversity , bird species, oxygen , and also very importantly for our psychological benefit, humans just need some place that is natural and lonely ,otherwise we risk making everything a concrete jungle.

In the UK, at one plant, DRAX Group uses wood pellets made from waste from wood products.
https://www.drax.com/about-us/

However, wood product waste is rather limited.

The discussion of using biomass and/or 'renewable' energy should be spun off as @Dale suggested.

 

[etudiant]

In the UK, at one plant, DRAX Group uses wood pellets made from waste from wood products.
https://www.drax.com/about-us/

However, wood product waste is rather limited.

The discussion of using biomass and/or 'renewable' energy should be spun off as @Dale suggested.

The 'waste from wood products' is a very elastic concept.
The oldest forests in Europe are in Poland, getting chopped down and turned into wood pellets on pretext that they are infested with some wood borers. Obviously greenwashing environmental destruction is highly profitable.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, as we again see very clearly...

 

[Dale]

One thing that just came to mind this morning was also that wood is a very dirty fuel that is difficult to refine. With a fluid fuel you can refine it so that it is almost completely a single chemical and you can optimize the combustion to burn that one chemical with as few side products as possible.

With a solid fuel like wood refining is impossible, so you are going to have lots of uncontrolled reactions with a wide variety of reaction products. We may worry most about CO2 from a global perspective, but locally the other various hydrocarbons may be more problematic.

 

[Prathyush]

Also efficiency of photosynthesis is very low.

 

[Dale]

Also efficiency of photosynthesis is very low.

Sure, but it is a whole lot more efficient to produce a square meter of photosynthetic “panel” than a square meter of photovoltaic panel.

 

[artis]

Well truth be told given how much we have reduced the planet's tree cover I'd say we should for some time just focus on planting new trees instead of thinking about how to use them in a net neutral carbon cycle.
If we replanted most of what we have cut down we would need to wait some 30+ years from now on in order to then start cutting in a planned and sustainable matter.

And what @Dale mentioned about the fact that wood is dirtier than refined liquid fuel like petrol or natural gas.
Also the reason why wood furnace chimneys get dirty quite faster I think. So many different gasses and products exiting through them, especially if the burn temp is not optimal.

 

[Rive]

wood is a very dirty fuel

While it's true, it's actually not really a problem. Wood can be burned directly, but if done in an industrial environment then it's usually done with other fuels like coal or household waste. None of those are 'cleaner'. The outgas is filtered adequately.
Wood burned locally in household stoves/heaters may cause measurable air pollution locally, but - well, that's part of life where it's still part of life.

Wood processing may happen biologically too, either by aiming for alcohols or methane. Both requires exactly that 'dirt' to work well, and the end product can be composted. Sadly, this is not really widespread, but by my personal opinion this would be the best option, especially since many agricultural byproducts could be processed in the same cycle (together with recycled but non-wanted paper).

By the way, refined wood is charcoal.

 

[BWV]

Sourcing of wood matters which adds to the absurdity of the German situation. Maybe you can make an argument for burning fast-growing efficiently farmed SE softwoods or eucalyptus in the Southern Hemisphere, but the wood has to be transported. Pellet plants were built in the SE US with European supply contracts and I really doubt the carbon impact of burning bunker fuel to ship the wood overseas was taken into account.

At best - say a coal plant next to a pellet processing plant in the SE where farmed timber takes 10-15 years to replenish could give you a carbon-neutral cycle

 

[russ_watters]

This is a discussion we've had before (oh...first on the "related threads" list below), and I'll just throw in my $0.02 again that I think the way wood/biomass is currently being treated is tantamount to fraud, and there's two separate bad accountings going on:

1. My understanding is that the idea that you could cut trees in the US and burn them in German and charge the carbon emissions on the US's balance sheet came from an unrelated industry tabulation before being incorporated into international climate treaty calculations. That shouldn't be an acceptable excuse for getting it wrong.

2. There's no such thing as "long term carbon natural". It's either carbon neutral now or it isn't (it isn't). The fact that if we eventually burn all our old-growth trees and settle into a steady state where we grow them as fast as we burn them and that state is carbon neutral is irrelevant. When we get there, then it'll be carbon neutral. Today, it isn't.

We need to keep our eye on the ball and not play silly accounting games; the next 50 years are critical and dumping more carbon into the atmosphere today and for the next several decades while pretending we aren't isn't the right path.

Using waste wood/sawdust/paper, etc. is more complicated. These decay fairly rapidly in a landfill and turn into methane, which is worse for AGW than CO2. So it's likely better to burn it than bury it over a relatively short timespan.

 

[Dale]

While it's true, it's actually not really a problem. Wood can be burned directly, but if done in an industrial environment then it's usually done with other fuels like coal or household waste. None of those are 'cleaner'.

I disagree that it’s not really a problem. If the best that you can say about wood is that coal isn’t cleaner, that is still a problem for wood.

Wood processing may happen biologically too, either by aiming for alcohols or methane. Both requires exactly that 'dirt' to work well, and the end product can be composted. Sadly, this is not really widespread, but by my personal opinion this would be the best option, especially since many agricultural byproducts could be processed in the same cycle (together with recycled but non-wanted paper).

I agree with this. I think that anaerobic digesters should be commonplace in agriculture for this purpose. They are well understood for agricultural waste, but I don’t know if they have been investigated for wood

 

[Dale]

We need to keep our eye on the ball and not play silly accounting games; the next 50 years are critical and dumping more carbon into the atmosphere today and for the next several decades while pretending we aren't isn't the right path.

IMO, we cannot fix this problem just by putting less net carbon into the air. We also need to sequester carbon out of the air. To me, wood is far more valuable in that role than as a biofuel.

A growing forest can sequester a lot of carbon per acre. Unfortunately, a lot of the eco forestry projects focus on planting trees (which produces carbon) or on preserving mature forests (which sequester very little carbon). We need to focus on growing trees, not just planting them, and while preserving mature forests is good for other reasons it is not relevant to climate change.

We should be growing as much lumber as possible, harvesting it, and taking it out of the environment. We should be using increased amounts of wood in construction and durable consumer goods wherever possible. I think that will be much more beneficial than burning it.

 

[russ_watters]

IMO, we cannot fix this problem just by putting less net carbon into the air. We also need to sequester carbon out of the air. To me, wood is far more valuable in that role than as a biofuel.

A growing forest can sequester a lot of carbon per acre.

Yeah, you're taking this a step further than I thought it through, and I agree. Why stop at neutral when you can pull carbon from the air by reversing a bad trend.

 

[artis]

Well if we could somehow reverse the amount of Co2 we put out to a level that is at least neutral or lower, where nature sucks out more per year than we put it, then it would be good. So basically we should at least in the short term forget about burning trees and simply plant them but that requires building additional energy sources that have nothing to do with Co2 , we are back at step 1.

China and India I think use so many coal plants simply because their cheap, and fast to build.

 

[Rive]

IMO, we cannot fix this problem just by putting less net carbon into the air. We also need to sequester carbon out of the air. To me, wood is far more valuable in that role than as a biofuel.

As long as significant amount of fossil sources are used (and likely it'll be so for the next half century, at the very least) I really can't find any good in using any sustainable resource for carbon sequestering.

I don’t know if they have been investigated for wood

Yes, both direction (methane and alcohol) were tested and works.
The basis of the process is cellulose, and that's fairly uniform, fortunately.
I prefer the alcoholic way though, since together with batteries it could be an easy patch for most of the remaining holes we have on a possible fossil-free transportation system.

If the best that you can say about wood is that coal isn’t cleaner, that is still a problem for wood.

Since we have the infrastructure for the really dirty coal and household waste, could you please point out where exactly is the 'dirt' in wood would cause problems?

 

[Dale]

As long as significant amount of fossil sources are used (and likely it'll be so for the next half century, at the very least) I really can't find any good in using any sustainable resource for carbon sequestering.

Which is why I said “also”. We need to do both. Both reduce the carbon in and increase the carbon out. Neither one alone will fix this.

As far as the timing, I strongly disagree that sequestration efforts are only worthwhile later. The best ways that we have to sequester carbon are intrinsically valuable anyway: growing and using lumber and practicing regenerative agriculture. Regenerative agriculture, in particular, sequesters carbon while improving soil, reducing chemical fertilizer flows into water ways, increasing biodiversity, improving water quality, and providing food. They should be pursued for their own sake, and encouraged for the planet’s sake.

 

[BWV]

Agricultural efficiency also facilitates reforestation - which is why the anti-GMO / organic food movement is a dead end. There has been some discussion that the world is close to peak farmland, so marginal land could be retired and allowed to reforest.

 

[Dale]

the anti-GMO / organic food movement is a dead end

Agreed. That movement was never founded on science anyway.

 

[Dale]

As long as significant amount of fossil sources are used (and likely it'll be so for the next half century, at the very least) I really can't find any good in using any sustainable resource for carbon sequestering.

Actually, I want to strengthen my response to this previously. While I do believe that we need to do both, sequestration has an inherent advantage over emission reduction. When a ton of CO2 is emitted by fossil fuels that results in about a 0.42 ton increase in atmospheric CO2. The remaining 0.58 ton of CO2 is naturally sequestered in the oceans or land. So reducing net emissions by 1 ton only reduces atmospheric CO2 by 0.42 ton.

In contrast, net sequestration of 1 ton of CO2 from the air reduces atmospheric CO2 by 1 ton. So effectively 1 ton of sequestration is equivalent to 2.4 tons of reduced emissions.

Therefore, we are immediately better off to use wood to sequester carbon than to offset fossil fuel emissions. We should look to reduce fossil fuel emissions elsewhere, with any of the many existing technologies that don't have a competing use for sequestration.

 

[artis]

Well this is one of my lines when arguing with my vegan friends, they say that my meat consumption is driving climate change , then I dig up the numbers of how much water and chemicals and farmland is used to grow some of their favorite stuff and then the mood seems to even out.
Not to mention the countless hectares of forests cut down for the growing of oil trees which then get used in various "healthy" goods.
Sure I don't know the numbers in absolute terms of how much Co2/deforestation would increase/decrease if all of the world stopped eating meat altogether and we all started just eating fruits, not sure anyone can tell that but I'm somewhat skeptical whether that alone would solve or even impact the current situation.
I myself still think that the best and most possible way to cut down greenhouse gas emissions is by changing our energy production and usage. Electricity and transportation since that still uses fossils.
Those are the 2 big whales of climate change , the third bit smaller one being agriculture.Speaking of wood buildings...



Although I am not sure whether wood buildings are sustainable now at least given how much wood is necessary and how little forests we already have left.

 

[Rive]

The remaining 0.58 ton of CO2 is naturally sequestered in the oceans or land.

I really do wonder where do you find acceptable the effect of that on the oceanic life, so that you don't want to address it.

 

[BWV]

Although I am not sure whether wood buildings are sustainable now at least given how much wood is necessary and how little forests we already have left.

timber can be a sustainability farmed commodity in temperate and some tropical locations - SE US softwood for example

it makes no sense to cut old-growth boreal forests that are net carbon sinks

 

[Dale]

they say that my meat consumption is driving climate change

There is something to be said for this argument, but the problem is not with meat itself but with the usual process for farming meat.

Usual factory-farmed beef involves cattle stocked at very high densities that are unsustainable in terms of input and output. They require feed to be imported, typically corn grown as a monoculture with high inputs in terms of tillage, fertilizer, and transport, all of which contribute CO2. The corn is usually grown in sterile soil that has very little carbon and often loses what little carbon it has. The cattle produce more manure than can be handled naturally, so it is pumped into big poop ponds where it decomposes anaerobically releasing lots of methane. So the complaint is not wrong.

However, regenerative agriculture is different. In that approach, cattle are fed on pasture with enough room to produce all or most of their feed on-farm. The pasture is a multi-species mix designed to build a strong root network and thriving soil biota. Fertility is managed by appropriate selection of legumes and grasses rather than fertilizer. The pasture grows, putting carbon into leaves, but also sequestering carbon into the soil. When the growth slows, the cattle are brought into rotationally graze the pasture. This stimulates the plants to resume a cycle of vigorous growth and sequestering more carbon. The result is both meat and carbon sequestration. Furthermore, the carbon is sequestered in a very valuable form that makes future agriculture better and less reliant on chemical amendments.

So the problem isn’t the product, it is the process. Meat can be produced in a regenerative fashion that actually improves the environment. It just isn’t usually done that way. It will make the meat more expensive, but that is only because the current model does not correctly internalize all of the real costs today.

 

[dlgoff]

We need rather to be ramping up nuclear power.

Right On!

 

[artis]

So the problem isn’t the product, it is the process. Meat can be produced in a regenerative fashion that actually improves the environment. It just isn’t usually done that way. It will make the meat more expensive, but that is only because the current model does not correctly internalize all of the real costs today.

Yes I agree the process is the bad part of course, I myself actually don't eat beef at least not regularly , I tend to eat healthier meat , also I don't like factory meat because they use various substances within the meat itself to make it longer lasting which takes away the taste and nutrients of it.
All in all here in EU we tend to make newer regulations which actually pushes the meat producers and farmers to actually use the methane for example in energy production or otherwise. Things are improving, actually farmers themselves see the benefits of some added green subsidies , the start up costs are large but once you are going it pays back.
Truth be told there are large government subsidies and there have to be , because going "green" for private businesses themselves often is a costly and painful process which they cannot do on their own.
In the end of the day it's all about 2 things, will and money, and when I say will I mean not just the law of the land but also the will of individual people.When in agriculture I can say clearly one needs to work on production methods as they can clearly minimize methane and CO2 releases with wood I think the data is not as clear, because in agriculture gasses are a byproduct, whereas in wood (if you burn it) they are part of the whole cycle and one cannot have a combustion process without gases released. So for me it's not as clear cut whether growing trees and then burning them is a reasonable climate change stopping process, I mean yes once we have hit a theoretical target then sure one can try out this regenerative carbon cycle but as of now when we need fast and powerful solutions I think this wood thing is too slow and too inefficient to make any measurable change.
I think it is a false premise to change coal plants for wood chip plants and hope anything will change as it will not in the short term, not even sure about the long term.
Yes I hear the argument about new forests sucking up more carbon but truth is we don't have much forest land left in the first place. I suppose one will not start planting forests in mid New York city or Paris or elsewhere.Also there is a strong push for EV's now at least in Europe probably also elsewhere, the problem I see here is that EV's if at sufficient quantity will at least double the grid demand over the years, are they really serious about matching this with wood chip burning plants? This is impossible. So in the light of this Germany closing their NPP's seems like an absurd idea. This is also the part I don't understand about the various climate movements they occupy oil tankers and demand end to fossil fuels , they also don't like nuclear based on pretty much skewed popular science , so in the end what do they like? Well they like Tesla's and Iphone's and such , they just don't want to hear where the electricity is coming from in that Tesla charger.

I think the reason why so many people hate Greta Thunberg is not because she speaks with a violent face expression all the time but rather because she criticizes all current activity without coming up herself with viable alternatives. One of my science mentor's once told me that unless I have better ideas there is no point in purely criticizing existing ones as that doesn't show my intellect rather my emotions...
Maybe Greta should start reading some nuclear physics and visit this forums for some in depth questions, then she could give some angry but meaningful insights in the next climate conference and push the slow bureaucrats into the right direction

 

[Dale]

All in all here in EU we tend to make newer regulations which actually pushes the meat producers and farmers to actually use the methane for example in energy production or otherwise.

Yes. Here is my favorite approach, called “Biogas Done Right”: (it is for agriculture in general and could be applied to meat or plant production) https://www.bio.org/sites/default/files/legacy/bioorg/docs/0230PM-Fabrizio Sibilla.pdf

This is pioneered in Italy, but there is nothing region-specific about it at all except local pricing of the various outputs. There is no technological development needed, everything is off-the-shelf existing technology. There is also substantial know-how already existing and published on best practices using this technology.

It is also profitable currently. Of course that profit does depend on local pricing structures, but the prices in Italy are not particularly unusual. This approach produces food, energy, and profit, and it does so while sequestering net carbon in the soil and reducing farm chemical inputs.

as of now when we need fast and powerful solutions I think this wood thing is too slow and too inefficient to make any measurable change.

Yes. I think time scales are important here. The natural cycle time for crop carbon is months to years. The natural cycle time for forests is decades to millennia. Since we need results in the years to decades time frame it is probably reasonable to consider crop carbon as “neutral” and wood carbon as “sequestered”. It just doesn’t make sense to deliberately put sequestered carbon back into the atmosphere. We need to pull carbon out of the atmosphere over the time scale that wood will easily keep it out. So IMO wood has an important role in the solution, but it is as a sequestration reservoir, not as a biofuel.

Truth be told there are large government subsidies and there have to be , because going "green" for private businesses themselves often is a costly and painful process which they cannot do on their own.

Yes. The only alternative that I can see is to properly internalize the full costs of current practices.

When a consumer buys a pork shoulder they pay for the feed that was used, the land and buildings that were used, the labor involved, the chemicals and transportation, etc. But they do not pay for the costs to remove the carbon from the atmosphere nor for the costs to restore the carbon to the soil nor for the costs to remove pollutants from the waterways.

If those costs were properly internalized then I think that market forces would naturally produce the right outcomes. But I, for one, personally don’t see a way to do that without government intervention either. This is essentially a “Tragedy of the Commons”. Perhaps it is unavoidable that preventing destruction of the commons must involve government as the arbiter of common interest.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

 

[artis]

Well as for the food I can say one thing, I personally leave nothing to waste because I know everything has value. For example bread often gets old and becomes like rock, I put it in a warm place to dry up. My friend has chickens in his country home, they lay some delicious eggs, I collect baskets of old bread pour some water on it and give to the chickens to eat.
Imagine all the food that is thrown out from supermarkets , I bet at least half of that can be used as is. Maybe it's not suitable for a toddler but it's definitely good for animals.
Heck I've had a beer get old and tasteless in the sun while in the farm and we have given it to the farm dog and pigs and they absolutely loved it. No kidding. As for climate conferences I really don't see the point in talking all the time. Paying Greta to be their angry cheerleader etc. This is actually simple to my mind. Here is a list.

1) Plant as many trees as you can everywhere until you lose consciousness or die from old age. And decrease the rate at which they are cut , so that planting overtakes cutting, leave the planted trees for the next couple of decades and forget about them, that's it it's simple. Yes maybe not business friendly but simple, period.

2) Revise nuclear power plants, take risk assessments to existing ones, take down only the ones that are either really old or have dangerous weaknesses, although what is considered a weakness is debatable , Russians have managed to squeeze a maximum out of their RBMK's and some still continue and will be shut down only mid 2030's.

3) Build new nuclear plants and replace coal ones, leave natural gas at some capacity and for reserve as it's simple to store and easy to fire up upon need. Continue implementing alternatives.
Build more energy efficient devices and homes.
And stop daydreaming about woodchips powering all Tesla's and the grid.I believe this is basically it, there is nothing more to do here, it just so happens to be that these are the routes most are unwilling to take and so instead of admitting the truth that we don't have alternatives they just gather at conferences.

Oh and yes speaking about trees, something which is unlikely to happen but needs to is the larger world countries need to stop cutting down the forests that are within their territory, this applies to Russian far east, even more so to Brazil and the rainforests, also China and elsewhere.
This should be treated like North Korean nuclear program - a hostile act against all world because that is what it is. Brazil should be met with the same sanctions as any other state that threatens world peace , same as Iran and the Afghan Taliban. But I feel this won't happen, because all parties are to blame and if Brazil for example would be penalized for their rainforests then they could show the finger to China and other countries that have done pretty much the same.