FOREST CARBON STORAGE: SCALE AND TRAJECTORY Global forests currently store approximately 296 gigatons of carbon in biomass—roughly 40 years of global CO2 emissions at current rates. However, deforestation removes 10 billion trees annually while reforestation efforts plant only 5 billion, creating a net loss of carbon sequestration capacity that's accelerating. The Amazon alone has transitioned from net carbon sink to net carbon source in certain regions as tipping points approach, fundamentally altering its role in planetary climate regulation. This matters because forests represent one of the few scalable natural carbon removal systems available; their degradation compresses our window for climate stabilization while simultaneously eliminating the infrastructure we'd need to achieve it.