<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>nkurz</author><text>Not to discourage you, but mature forest is generally close to carbon neutral.  It stores a reasonable amount of carbon, but usually isn&amp;#x27;t sequestering much more.  For actually offsetting carbon, what you want is new growth.  Typically, this is done by cutting the trees to make room for new ones while preventing the wood you cut from decomposing back into CO2.&lt;p&gt;So if your goal is direct carbon offset, your best bet might cut a clearing and use it to build your house --- possibly even intentionally cutting a larger clearing than you otherwise would.  Unless your land was cut recently, in which case letting it grow the way you plan might be just fine.&lt;p&gt;If your new land is in the Northeastern US, you might enjoy reading the reports from this group: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;wildlandsandwoodlands.org&amp;#x2F;vision&amp;#x2F;overview&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;wildlandsandwoodlands.org&amp;#x2F;vision&amp;#x2F;overview&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text><parent_chain><item><author>ProllyInfamous</author><text>I just purchased a very small part of a forest, an inholding within 8000 acres of protected land trust and 40,000+ of national forest surrounding.&lt;p&gt;Having no clue of the actual number, I suspect I now own thousands of trees. Last week, I owned zero trees.&lt;p&gt;Thankfully this US state offers multiple forms of conservation easement, which will allow me to keep trees on 99% of the land (building two tiny homes on dozens of acres). Perhaps I might even generate some authentic &lt;i&gt;carbon offsets&lt;/i&gt;?</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>The Canadian government&apos;s plan to plant two billion trees</title><url>https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/features/two-billion-trees</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>losvedir</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s pretty interesting. Do you have any more info about how you did that or how you found it or how much something like that costs? Was it just a sustainability donation kind of thing, or do you intend to (or can you) live there or visit?&lt;p&gt;We donate to a Shirley Heinz Land Trust which buys up decrepit lots around where we live in Gary, IN and around there, and restores them into preserves. But it&amp;#x27;s nothing on the scale of what you bought, it sounds like.</text><parent_chain><item><author>ProllyInfamous</author><text>I just purchased a very small part of a forest, an inholding within 8000 acres of protected land trust and 40,000+ of national forest surrounding.&lt;p&gt;Having no clue of the actual number, I suspect I now own thousands of trees. Last week, I owned zero trees.&lt;p&gt;Thankfully this US state offers multiple forms of conservation easement, which will allow me to keep trees on 99% of the land (building two tiny homes on dozens of acres). Perhaps I might even generate some authentic &lt;i&gt;carbon offsets&lt;/i&gt;?</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>The Canadian government&apos;s plan to plant two billion trees</title><url>https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/features/two-billion-trees</url></story>