The solution for the melting polar ice caps may be hiding in the rainforest | Dr Paul Salaman

Reducing carbon emissions is truly important to mitigating climate change. But in the meantime, it's faster and cheaper to save and regrow tropical trees

There was already dramatic evidence that our planet is undeniably warming before 30 December 2015, when the world heard that the ice at the North Pole was melting. (The temperature on 30 December 2015 was, by some reports, 33F [0.7C], 50F above average).

And yet one immediate, effective way to fight climate change and save polar ice caps is half a world away, in the tropics. Tropical forest conservation and restoration could constitute half of the global warming solution, according to a recent peer reviewed commentary in Nature Climate Change.