The Race to Reforestation

I admit it--I don't follow NASCAR.  I inherited my Indiana dad's preference for Indy Car and for open wheel racing in general.  But I do live in North Carolina and I'm familiar with the series and its audience, so when I first heard about a program called NASCAR Green, I was in for a bit of a shock.  I didn't expect NASCAR to be the series with the biggest and best sustainability program.  I don't mean anything negative toward those who like NASCAR, of course.  It's just that I wouldn't think of sustainability as something the NASCAR audience would care about; therefore, I didn't expect it to be on the series' agenda.  

    

Even knowing that the program existed, I didn't think it would amount to much.  Maybe it's the pessimist in me, but I tend not to get too excited about products touted as "eco-friendly" or businesses turning "greener" because it often seems like more of a marketing tactic than a real step toward sustainability.  Water bottles with leaves on the labels are examples of this--that particular company may have started using less plastic, but that doesn't make bottled water green.  It makes it slightly less harmful.  Now, don't get me wrong:  I support any move in the eco direction, no matter how small or superficial it may seem.  But NASCAR Green is neither small nor superficial.  NASCAR Green's actions include using a 15% Ethanol blend, LEED certified office buildings, solar power, a large recycling program, and more.  But the best step they're taking?  I would argue it's planting trees. 

Recycling is great, but it only targets the solid waste problem.  And that is a problem, of course; we're going to run out of places to put our trash soon!  But unfortunately, unless a recycling plant runs on renewable fuel, it's contributing to carbon pollution, too.  Everyone should be recycling, but the greenest thing a racing series in particular can do is try to offset its carbon emissions.  That's what the NASCAR Green Clean Air Program is all about.  This program plants 10 trees for every green flag dropped at a race, and NASCAR claims this captures every bit of the carbon emitted during races.  

How does this help?  Remember, plants produce energy the opposite way we do--they take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen.  This is part of the process of photosynthesis. You might remember the photosynthesis formula from biology class: 

 6CO₂ + 6H₂O + Light Energy = C₆H₁₂O₆ + 6O₂

or

Carbon dioxide, water, and light energy produce glucose and oxygen.

This means that the more trees we clear away for strip malls and subdivisions, the more unabsorbed carbon dioxide we have to deal with in the atmosphere.  Conversely, if we plant trees, we allow more carbon to be absorbed, mitigating the effects of climate change.

Now it's important that we plant trees at all, but it's not the last step.  Once we plant them--and this seems to be the hardest thing for humans to do sometimes--we have to leave them alone.  Until about six years ago, it was believed that forests that have been left to grow for long periods of time, called old-growth forests, were limited in the amount of carbon they could take in.  This, however, is not the case.  Subsequent research has shown that old-growth forests are even better at capturing carbon than younger forests.  If the hundreds of trees planted by NASCAR Green really do offset 100% of NASCAR's racing-related emissions, imagine the capturing capabilities of those trees if we let them grow.

Maybe racing and sustainability don't seem to go hand in hand at first glance, but it turns out that there's more than one reason they do.  One of them is innovation, of course.  But there's also this:  if people are passionate about racing, it means they have something to care about.  Maybe those who instituted NASCAR Green realized that unless we change how we do things, we'll lose the things we love.  Environmentalism is really about preserving what we care about, whatever that may be.  There's no reason motorsports enthusiasts shouldn't protect the environment for all sorts of reasons, including motorsports itself.  Green racing isn't just for Formula E; I'd love to see all racing series follow the promising lead of NASCAR Green.