> I thought whatever carbon a tree extracts during its lifetime, it releases when it decomposes.
Trees can live for hundreds of years. Guess what happens when there are more live trees.
> Unless we chop it down and store it (and plant a new tree!), the tree doesn't remove much carbon from the atmosphere (long term, on average).
But you in fact can do this. Or chop it down and make furniture or buildings out of it, which themselves can last for hundreds of years.
And even if you don't know some cost effective way to keep the dead trees from decomposing, that process itself takes decades after the tree has already grown and died, which at minimum buys us a decent amount of time to figure something out.
Trees can live for hundreds of years. Guess what happens when there are more live trees.
> Unless we chop it down and store it (and plant a new tree!), the tree doesn't remove much carbon from the atmosphere (long term, on average).
But you in fact can do this. Or chop it down and make furniture or buildings out of it, which themselves can last for hundreds of years.
And even if you don't know some cost effective way to keep the dead trees from decomposing, that process itself takes decades after the tree has already grown and died, which at minimum buys us a decent amount of time to figure something out.