There are political and practical difficulties doing that but there are also difficulties with wrecking the climate that might outweigh those.
It is called Carbon Forest Sylviculture (Leśne Gospodarstwo Węglowe). Over all it is more of a marketing scheme with very small impact. We tried to increase sequestration rates with correct sylvicultural regimes.
Currently it is more like a way for companies to sound ecological. IDK if it can be profitable, remember land and everything cost and I think those profit margins would be very small.
Forestry is science. There are loads of smart people working in this area currently.
China and India already plant a lot of trees.
US can sit back relax and dedicate that space to more research centers and get ahead while China/India are busy squeezing their population and putting up large pieces of land for reforestation.
Not every country has to do it, not many in Europe will shell out for reforestation.
The carbon in atmosphere will have effect nomatter where the tree is.
https://education.seattlepi.com/rates-deforestation-reforest...
The US is more forested than it has been in the past.
honest question: can you point me to any US politician that has stood up to a corporation or corporate interest with laws that effectively say, "No, you can't have what you want, the people need <this> instead." and - most importantly - got those laws passed? I can't think of one. I think obamacare came close (which became one of the most hardfought wins ever), and yet the health insurance lobby still came out ahead. I dare say that no congress shall ever pass a law that harms a corporation (a de facto constitutional amendment).
What does that have to do with carbon control ? ICE auto industry, coal industry, oil and gas, etc, would all be "harmed" if US lawmakers passed anything that had a material impact on CO2 emissions. It would require multiple layers of alternative realities for that to ever happen, in my (admittedly cynical) opinion. I'm sorry if this sounds like I'm saying we should give up/not try. I _want_ us to solve global warming. I just can't picture it happening (at least for the redress method I listed above).
Furthermore, both Warren and Bernie Sanders seem to have genuine convictions w.r.t. climate change, health care, social inequality, etc. Whether or not their particular points of view are desirable is open for debate, but their multi-decade commitments to these issues are beyond question. They seem to have non-trivial support in the electorate as well - I encourage you to check them out, especially if you're feeling cynical or anxious about the future.
Great convictions are a start. but in order for them to actually pass legislation, they need other congress members to vote for them. and that's where the dirty tricks start (I wont vote for your X unless you vote for my Y, etc).
I guess I'm contradicting myself a bit, because I said "name one" without acknowledging that it takes a majority in congress to pass anything. So yes, Warren and Sanders have the courage to face corporate interests. Thank you. I just yearn for the day where shareholders of XYZ get a 30% haircut because laws were passed that reigned in their company's behavior.
(Of course, institutions can only be so effective when their leadership is unlawfully replaced with incompetent industry hacks by the next administration; the only way to tackle that is with higher-level political action: court fights, impeachment, and ultimately elections.)
Just laws on the books doesn’t accomplish anything. There are already plenty of laws against ripping off consumers, but corporatist ideologues in control of the US Supreme Court have spent the last several decades watering down the potential liability via increasingly tendentious reinterpretations.
Now, the question is, why don't these agencies enforce the same laws against corporations? That's the premise of my initial comment, which you also misunderstood.
Many of the ones commonly considered to be “law enforcement agencies” per se are listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_law_enforcement_in_the... but there are many other federal agencies which might also be considered “law enforcement” under a broader interpretation of that term.
Different agencies have different focus, different mandate, different institutional powers, etc.
Arguably the functions established for the CFPB to perform could be undertaken by some other institution. But the point of the legislation and its implementation (which Warren and others worked very carefully on) was creating a semi-autonomous institution solely focused on consumer financial protection.
During the Obama years the CFPB was pretty effective, despite unified and extreme opposition from GOP politicians. (Its effectiveness explains why some folks were eager to see it defanged.)
This is a straw man. Nobody thinks this.
> but we don't need a "domestic violence bureau"
There are several federal institutions which deal with domestic violence (alongside additional state and local ones). For example the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, and has the mandate to “understand, respond to, and prevent” domestic violence.
The FBI can also investigate specific domestic violence crimes, but my impression is that it is not their highest priority.
Domestic violence is a huge problem and is famously underreported, underinvestigated, and underprosecuted. Probably not the best example you might pick; arguably having additional government agencies with the power to do something about domestic violence might make a positive difference. (Disclaimer: I know very little about this subject.)
OTOH, most corporate crimes do cross state boundaries and thus are within the jurisdiction of both state and federal authorities.
With respect to cigarettes, the product itself doesn't kill people. There are people that live for decades smoking multiple times a day. The secondary effects kill many people, but there isn't a sufficiently strong correlation to ban cigarettes outright.
Can we eventually take per capita carbon footprint down to a fraction of what it was in 2016? I think so, if the people can be convinced to elect sane leaders in the US and elsewhere.
Can vast regions in the USA and other countries be re-forested? Yes, if the willpower is there.
Is it worthwhile to develop artificial carbon sequestration facilities that operate on vast scales? Yep.