Planting trees is sometimes suggested as the solution to climate change. Make no doubt about it, planting trees is important, but there are a couple of points worth remembering. Firstly, we have to stop destroying the rain forests as we cannot compensate for devastating the environment by planting saplings in other parts of the world. Secondly, trees only capture 25% of the CO2 released into the atmosphere. A similar amount is absorbed by the oceans but 50% of the CO2 emitted will remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. The other point to consider is that the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are already too high and even if we stopped the destruction of rain forests and stopped emitting CO2, we still need to plant trees in order to capture CO2 emissions that have been produced for the last 150 years.