Labour’s 2 Billion Trees Plan Leaves No Room for Homes mdi-fullscreen
Labour has announced a plan to plant 2 billion trees over the next 20 years. The BBC describes this as “ambitious”. Guido has been doing some sums.
This would mean more than 270,000 trees being planted every day for 20 years.
Assuming a 7-hour working day that is over 600 trees a minute.
That would require 20,000 people planting trees.
If each tree requires a planting density of say 10 square metres per tree, that is 10,000 trees per square kilometre, so 27 square kilometres-a-day, that is foresting an area the size of Exeter every day for 20 years.
After 20 years some 9.5% of the UK land surface would have to been forested.
The surface area of Britain is 209,331,000,00m², given 13% of Britain is already forest, that means Labour’s tree planting would result in nearly 23% of Britain being forest. Roughly 70% of Britain is currently agricultural land and the remaining 7% of the country is urbanised for human habitation. Looks like Labour’s 150,000 homes a year pledge will actually have to be treehouses…