Last year we spoke about the Mongol Rally and even interviewed one of the participating teams. What's this? A charity rally departing three European cities (this year: London, Milan and Madrid) that tries to reach Ulan Bator, the capital city of Mongolia. In order to participate in this rally, cars should have engines under 1 liter of capacity (and motorbikes under 125 cm³) and teams have to raise at least £1,000 to participate. This year, the Spanish teams will have a partner, Bosques Naturales, that is going to plant more than 100 trees that will offset the estimated 2-tons (metric) of CO₂ that each car will produce during the event.

[Source: Mongol Rally and Agronoticias]

When we mention Brazil, we're usually speaking about their aggressive ethanol (alcoól) policy or their availability of flex-fuel cars. But today we're speaking about a creative proposition: The Brazilian Câmara dos Deputados is discussing a bill which will make planting trees mandatory as a means of paying fees for certain legal proceedings. Which ones? Getting married, getting a divorce, buying a new car or trading estate.

For example, if you want to get married, you would have to pay to plant 10 trees (25 if you later need a divorce). When purchasing a car, you would need to plant 20 trees, 40 if it's a light-duty van or 60 if it's a heavy vehicle. When trading estate, 10 trees would be required to sell a house, 20 to sell a business.

The idea is that all these activities harm the environment and so we should give something back. The law aims to recover the rainforest and offset the country's carbon emissions. Conservative estimates from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics calculate that about 65 million trees would be planted per year under the proposed rules.

[Source: Globo]

Figure of the day: In a country where half of the surface is covered by forests (such as Spain), trees capture 20 percent of that country's CO₂ emissions. This nice information masks two facts: we still have 80 percent of those emissions still to reduce and that the group that is currently spreading this information, the FBYCC (Forum of Forests and Climate Change) is asking for forest owners to be compensated. Seventy percent of Spanish forestsare held in private hands.

The FBYCC states that trees play a very important role in fighting combat change. Species such as eucalyptus and pine trees are the fastest growing, so they capture carbon more efficiently. Also, if you have some spare land available, bear in mind that you can offset a compact car's annual carbon emissions with the following: 0.39 ha of beech trees (about 1 acre), 0.14 ha of poplars (0.34 acre) or 0.19 ha of pines (about half an acre).

[Source: FBYCC via Madrid+d]

Some of our readers aren't very fond of carbon offsetting programs and I do share quite a dose of skepticism about this matter, here's some research that affirms that planting trees, although some species more than others, can effectively capture CO2 from the atmosphere and convert it into organic tissue.

Manuel Enrique Figueroa, from the University of Sevilla, directed the a project that calculated how useful certain tree species were to able to absorb CO2 during their growth process. Growing trees, according to him, is a simple yet effective (up to a certain point, of course) way to achieve this.

The species they studied were from Western Europe, but they affirmed that they could be extended to other species around the world. Do you want to see the rank and how many tons of CO2 they can absorb per year? Follow us after the jump (the picture is from the winner).

Related:

• The first country to fully offset CO2 emissions

[Source: Universidad de Sevilla via Econoticias]