Creative carbon capture Last week, the Australian Government pledged half a billion dollars for “clean” energy projects, including $264 million on “carbon capture and storage” (CCS). This involves capturing emissions from power stations and factories and then burying them. However, the Climate Council has stated that CCS is “extremely expensive and cannot deliver zero emissions”. There are, of course, faster, simpler and cheaper ways to capture and store carbon. Firstly, plant more trees, and secondly, stop cutting down existing ones. A recent study in Science magazine states that globally, a 25 per cent increase in forested area could store more than 200 gigatonnes of additional carbon at maturity. Such a change has the potential to store an equivalent of 25 per cent of the current atmospheric carbon pool.