The Earth Is Getting Greener!

See From economist John Palmer.

"No foolin', and this is good news: the earth's biomass of plants has been growing, and noticeably so. From the G&M [via JR]:

... between 2003 and 2012 (the last year... analyzed), something surprising happened: The trees started growing back. Their results showed that deforestation in Brazil and Indonesia slowed sharply, while better growing conditions in the savannahs of northern Australia and southern Africa added mass, and – most dramatically – the vast forests of China and Russia grew back at a considerable pace. The last point is especially significant: The boreal forest, which stretches across Northern Canada and Russia, stores almost 60 per cent of the world’s carbon (tropical rain forests store about half that much).

The result was, they reported, “an overall gain” in the world’s carbon-absorbing green matter – a result that has been reproduced in other recent studies showing an expansion of the global carbon sink.

And the conclusion is especiallyimportant:

The return of the trees teaches us a lesson. To reduce our destructive carbon output, the solution is not to reduce economic activity; rather, it’s to combine a booming urban economy with smart policies that make growth and ecology work in harmony."