The Sunday Read: ‘Can Planting a Trillion New Trees Save the World?’

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 21 August 2022

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the past decade, planting trees has come to represent many things: a virtuous act, a practical solution and a symbol of hope in the face of climate change. But can planting a trillion trees really save the world? Visiting the Eden Reforestation Projects in Goiás, Brazil, and interviewing numerous international scientists and activists, the journalist Zach St. George offers a vivid insight into the root of the tree-planting movement — from the Green Belt Movement of the 1970s to the Trillion Tree Campaign of the 2010s — and considers the concept’s environmental potential, as well as the movement’s shortcomings.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Every time you participate in our economy by, say, ordering some CBD oil or a yoga mat
0:11.1	or a wood burning pizza oven, you might feel a bit guilty about the carbon footprint
0:16.3	of your purchases.
0:18.4	At the same time, few of us want to become aesthetics who never drive or buy things.
0:24.0	We don't want to make the tough choices that would actually reduce our individual impact
0:28.7	on the planet.
0:29.7	But what if there was a way to have both?
0:32.4	Would you feel better knowing that for every item you buy, someone somewhere in the world
0:37.8	plants a tree?
0:39.3	Many organizations and large corporations, like Nestle, Shell Oil and Amazon, think you
0:44.7	would.
0:45.7	And that's why they're participating in the global movement to plant a trillion new trees.
0:53.5	My name is Zach St. George.
0:55.1	I'm a contributor to the New York Times magazine.
0:58.2	I cover conservation and climate change.
1:01.7	If you Google, quote, plant a tree, you'll see a bunch of search results for groups offering
1:07.4	to put a tree in the ground for you in return for donations or as a result of something
1:12.8	you bought.
1:13.8	And this is a pretty inexpensive thing for them to do.
1:16.7	A tree can be planted for as little as, say, 10 cents.
1:20.6	But the organizations and companies that plant the trees tend to be pretty opaque.
1:25.5	One researcher I talked with found that the number of trees these organizations have claimed
	...

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