Deforestation contributes 20-30% of CO2 emissions (1.6 billion tons). Trees take in millions of tons of greenhouse gases. When they’re cut down they release these gases into the air. The United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) estimates that trees hold up to 283 gigatons of carbon in their mass. The forest fires in the U.S. in 2007 contributed 6% of the total greenhouse gases for the U.S. that year.

According to the U.N.’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), around 32 million acres of forests disappear every year, most of it in the tropics. The main reason for forest clearing hasn’t changed in 10,000 years. As much as 80 percent of all deforestation is done because of the need to clear land for agriculture. The WWF is now warning that if nothing is done 60 percent of the Amazon rain forest could disappear by 2030.

Carbon trading has been considered recently as an effort to stop deforestation. The idea is to let countries that fall under the max level for emissions sell that quota as credits to countries who have gone over the max amount. The real concern, however, is that carbon trading only really serves rich nations; the issue being that carbon trading could put the vital resources of the developing world in the hands of nations that can use carbon credits as a way to counter, or delay, reductions of their own greenhouse gas emissions at the same time. The World Bank says it wants to reduce global deforestation by 10 percent by 2010. But its critics claim the World Bank has traditionally been a proponent of deforestation.