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COSTING THE EARTH
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PROGRAMME INFO |
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Costing the Earth tells stories which touch all our lives, looking at man's effect on the environment and at how the environment reacts. It questions accepted truths, challenges the people in charge and reports on progress towards improving the world we live in. |
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LISTEN AGAIN Ìý30 min |
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PRESENTER |
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'Costing the Earth confronts accepted views on the environment. I think the programme consistently manages to get the real story and tell it in a way that makes people care.'
Miriam O'Reilly
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PROGRAMME DETAILS |
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| Trees- good or evil? |
When Trees Turn Bad
Trees are great aren't they? They prevent drought in dry areas and floods in wet areas. They suck up the Carbon Dioxide emitted by Coldplay CDs and world tours by the Rolling Stones. And lets not forget that squirrels love them.
But it turns out that those wily woods have been fooling us all along. A report from the UK Department for International Development revealed that billions of pounds are being spent on tree-planting schemes around the world. Most, if not all, of that money is being wasted. The latest research shows that trees can cause drought, they don't prevent it. In fact they often waste more water than agricultural crops. They also do nothing to stop the kind of disastrous flash flooding we see in Bangladesh, Haiti and Guatemala.
Worse still, other studies by British researchers are revealing the folly of relying on trees to suck up the Carbon Dioxide that's contributing to global warming. First of all they're not actually very good at it, secondly they return all that carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere when their leaves and branches fall off, when they rot and die or when they catch fire. At best, campaigners say, they're a temporary salve to our consciences that will do nothing to prevent climate change.
So are trees really up to the job of saving the planet? Miriam O'Reilly investigates in this week's 'Costing the Earth'.
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