Carbon-offset outfits should take note of dr bala 's paper . Planting trees in convenient places such as europe and north america may actually be counterproductive . Instead , in an environmental two-for-one , it is the rainforests that need bolstering .
Bala ramasamy , an economics professor at the china europe international business school in shanghai , says he believes the chaos is a result of many chinese , who have flocked to cities from the countryside , still viewing themselves and their lifestyles as rural .
Thus , dr bala 's model can be told to replace all the world 's forests with shrubby grasslands , and left alone to work out how such a change would alter greenhouse-gas concentrations and how that , in turn , would influence the temperature in different places .