Green Party councillors have questioned claims by Warwickshire County Council that planting a tree for every person in the county will make a substantial impact on reducing the local carbon footprint.

Cllr Heather Timms announced at the beginning of the month that WCC would be planting over 500,000 trees to restore historic woodlands like the Forest of Arden.

She said the plans showed the council's commitment "to play our part in addressing the climate emergency".

However town and district councillor John Dearing and county councillors Jonathan Chilvers and Will Roberts said the "enthusiastic claims" were "misplaced".

The councillors said whilst on the surface the plans seem positive, their impact is likely to be negligible.

"One tree per person - about 500,000 trees across Warwickshire in total - sounds as if a lot of carbon dioxide (CO2) will get taken out of the atmosphere," they said.

"But one tree takes about 40 years to capture 1 tonne of CO2, and the average Warwickshire resident currently emits about 5 tonnes every year.

"Even when they are quite mature, the trees will have only offset two to three months of today's emissions."

As such the Green councillors refuted Cllr Timms' claim that "the UK will need to plant a million more trees nationally to become carbon net zero".

The Green party councillors added: "In fact many authorities view carbon offsetting through tree planting as a smokescreen for real action on carbon emissions.

"Tree planting, even at these scales, will make little contribution to reducing CO2 emissions over the next 10 years when a near 50 per cent reduction is required for global temperatures to remain below an increase of 1.5C.

"Well thought through tree planting can of course have biodiversity and other benefits, but Warwickshire County Council's climate action plans would be far more credible if among other things they seriously invested in active travel through new cycleways, better public transport – and stopped building roads."

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