If there is one mantra , which has anchored the environmental movement since its beginnings, is that trees are good. Good for the environment. Good for biodiversity. And certainly good for the climate. Despite decades of high-tech efforts (and (The $100 million XPrize funded by Elon Musk) trees remain one of the most reliable ways to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere—up to about 8 gigatons per year, according to a 2023 study. So what’s up with this paper just published in Nature? from the environmental nonprofit World Resources Institute (WRI), which reports that wood consumption accounts for about 10 % of annual global greenhouse gas emissions? That’s more than all the passenger cars on the planet combined. And the world is on track to harvest 50 % more wood by 2050. Could this shake our faith in wood’s role as a climate hero? As always, the devil is in the details.