by Paige Donner
Planting trees to curb carbon emission isn’t something that President Trump dreamed up off the top of his head during his recent State of The Union address in DC. In fact, it is a crusade that Wangari Maathai won a Nobel Peace Prize for in 2004. As part of her crusade she marshaled an initiative to plant 30 million trees in Africa, and not just in her native Kenya, either.
That was before the popular culture climbed on board with this whole climate change issue and its congruent need to reduce carbon emissions. Heck, it was even a full 3 years before Gore won his Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth.
Of course, now that Trump has put his mojo behind tree planting, the leftist libs, who seem to think they own the space of climate and planet Earth preservation, are touting it as a ‘worse than stupid’ idea (Earther). I guess that author is saying that Maathai needs to give back her Nobel Peace prize?
In any case, the Trillion Tree initiative is being championed not just by presidents and African activists. A Gen-Z named Finkbeiner got behind the idea when he was a kid and started something called Plant-for-the-Planet. He’s tasked himself and his supporters with reforesting every continent (hello Australia!) with millions of trees planted. And to be clear, the Trillion Trees Initiative looks to plant, restore or conserve a trillion trees.
T3 For The Future: Trump’s Trillion Trees = A Breathable Future
What does this actually break down to?
Say that by the time Greta is old enough to have a glass of wine in California, that the world’s population will have surpassed 8 billion people.
Divide 1 Trillion (American trillion, not British) by 8 billion and you come up with roughly 125 trees for every man, woman and child on earth.
125 Trees per person.
Divide 125 by 5 years, dating from today on up through the finished successful second term of POTUS, and you get …25 trees per year per person.
25 Trees per year, per person for 5 years.
And Voila! We have now just planted, as a collective human species, a Trillion Trees.
Lets run those numbers again:
8 billion people
1 Earth
25 Trees per person per year
1 Tree planted every two weeks (roughly) by every man, woman and child.
= Trillion Trees BY 2025
*In July of 2019 Ethiopia broke a world record when 23 million people planted 350 million trees — In ONE DAY!
When you break it down into bite sizes like that, it actually seems doable, doesn’t it?
Have you ever planted a tree? I have. I spent a weekend once, ten years ago, with Mayor Villaraigosa of Los Angeles and his good friend, Will.i.am planting trees all around East L.A. All of us volunteers, and there were hundreds of us, had a blast. It was good times.
I’d kinda like to see those trees today. See what became of them and how they’re doing.
Trees are fabulous creatures. They are perhaps more intelligent than many of us humans, I have come to suspect more and more. Some trees live thousands of years, such as the olive trees in Israel, Jordan and Palestine.
When my mom was visiting this year during the holidays, we went to the Fondation Cartier here in Paris to see their exhibit, We The Trees (A Nous Les Arbres). It was heart stopping. But not in a way you might think. There was no climate activism integrated in the exhibit. It was simply about the beauty and longevity, the intelligence and majesty of trees. And what they mean to all of us.
The best question they asked at that exhibit was, When you think of a tree, which one is it? What tree is the one that is most meaningful to you in your life?
Go ahead. Answer it. The memory of your special tree will fill you with love and warmth, and, yes, a reverence for the magic and awe of nature. (My grandmother’s fig tree in Santa Barbara is mine).
A trillion trees. I don’t think that’s stupid at all. Do you?
Paige Donner has written extensively on environmental issues, notably on the topics of clean water and air.
