Is #TeamTrees a Sustainable Way to Combat Climate Change?

On October 25th, the Youtuber Mr.Beast posted a video on explaining his plan to raise 20 million dollars to plant 20 million trees by the 1st of January 2020. The trees are planted through the Arbor Day Foundation, an NGO dedicated to tree planting.

In this video we emphasise avoiding the planting of monoculture plantations and instead supporting the regeneration of natural forests which store much more carbon from the atmosphere and are ecologically beneficial. We discuss if #teamtrees, and by extension the ArborDay Foundation, is a good environmental platform to support and how this compares to large governmental action.

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Music Credit:
The Beaten Path by Andrew Langdon (Adapted)

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[OurEden]

Transcript with references:

On October 25th, the Youtuber Mr.Beast posted a video on explaining his plan to raise 20 million dollars to plant 20 million trees by the 1st of January 2020. This idea was incepted by Mr Beast’s subscribers over various social media platforms as a celebration for reaching the major milestone of 20 million subscribers.
Mr Beast accepted the challenge and teamed up with Mark Rober to start the #teamtrees project.
This ambitious endeavour has necessitated the largest youtube collaboration in history; notable mentions including: Smarter every day, Linus tech tips, slow mo guys, iJustine, Marques brownlee, Alan becker, Jeffree Star and many more. With only 2 months to complete the challenge the team and many other content creators published tons of content to promote the movement, which has since gained huge traction, amassing 14 million dollars in the first 14 days.
One of the largest donations of $1, 000, 000 was made on the 4th day of the campaign, from Elon Musk of Tesla and Space X. This was followed up the next day by a $1, 000, 001 donation from Tobias Lütke CEO of Shopify, who was not about to be out done by Elon [1]. Of course many other celebrity figures also donated.

Obviously these are a scratch on the bank balance of some of these donors; but it is great to see such a positive contribution from many key influencers, as the message from #teamtrees is arguably much more significant than the trees themselves. But let's look into this in more detail. What is the social and environmental impact of #teamtrees?

It is estimated that the number of trees around the world has fallen by almost half, since the start of human civilisation [2]. Deforestation increases carbon-dioxide levels as there are less trees to absorb CO2 and when the products made from trees get burned or disposed of they release their carbon back to the environment. but planting them could store away some of the carbon we’ve put in the atmosphere.

The teamtrees project has partnered with Arbor Day Foundation, a non-government-organisation that has been planting trees in North America and around the world for the last 47 years. In fact they are the oldest tree planting NGO who focus on planting and maintaining native species in public forest-lands managed by government agencies; so as to not disrupt local biodiversity. Their motto is “to plant the right trees, in the right place, at the right time, for the right reasons.”
This is in contrast to other recent tree planting efforts, who although virtuous in intention, may be harming local wildlife. This is due to planting primarily mono-culture plantations of trees, but more on that in a minute.

Globally there has never been more ambition and action in planting trees. In 2014, 51 countries pledged to plant over 3.5m square km of forest by 2030, this is almost as big an area as the entire European Union [3]. The target, superficially at least, looks likely to be achieved. However, “tree planting is not always good” according to Simon Lewis, Global change science UCL. This is because the motives for planting trees are not always green. Remember the mono-culture plantations we mentioned earlier? They are large tree planting efforts where thousands of hectares is planted with a single species of tree. Currently half of the government tree planting pledges involve short rotation, monoculture plantations [2].

Short rotation means that they are planting trees with polluting fertiliser to speed up growth so they can be harvested for greater commercial value. The most common trees planted in tree planting projects are eucalyptus, oil palm and pine; which produce very lucrative raw materials, most of which is exported to developed countries, leaving behind the true value of the resource: ecological degradation, depleted soil, pesticide contaminated water, and an exploited native population. Monoculture plantations of these trees suffocate biodiversity. In addition, evergreen species like eucalyptus take up ground water all year round leading to dry earth and increased risk of forest fires [4]. For instance, in January in Chile in 2017, 600, 000 hectares of tree plantations, native forests and other lands went up into flames as a result of prolonged periods of drought in the widespread monoculture pine plantations. Causing 11 fatalities and massive social and economic harm, the Chilean fires provided further evidence that monoculture tree plantations undermine a regions climate resilience. They are highly susceptible to fire, pests, and storm damage. They also erode the soils, suppress plant and animal biodiversity, and deplete and contaminate water resources. When they cut down for resource value, the exposure of lose depleted soil promotes desertification and increases the risks of landslides [4]. Hence, studies show that harvested plantations only store 1/40th of the carbon natural forests do. However, making and disposing of products made from harvested trees is simply returning that small amount of carbon saved back into the atmosphere. [2]
This takes us to the point that plantations are not forests, and not all trees planting efforts are beneficial to the environment; sadly many of them are harmful but win government and public funding, largely due to the growing support of climate policies which can be deceitful satisfied on paper through monoculture plantations whilst profiting from the resources harvested. If you’d like more details please see the videos by the economist and ecosia linked in the description.

The world is currently in love with the idea of planting trees. However, as noble as the notion is we must be truthful about what our impacts really are otherwise we will not see any real changes. An article published in “Science” last July estimated the total global tree cover potential [5a]. The results show there is space for an extra 0.9 billion hectares of forest cover, which if allowed to mature could store an optimistic 205 Gton of carbon. This computational result assumed large areas of land which is not suitable for forest growth; and was corrected by a different study, to a more realistic 42 Gton of carbon [5b]. Of course this is still a significant amount of carbon. In fact it is enough to sequester all of the carbon emitted in 2010 [6]. Of course we are emitting more and more greenhouse gasses each year and there is only finite space to plant trees to remove these gases. Additionally, we still have to allow the forests to mature, which could take 3-4 decades. But this only emphasises the urgency to act. This is a prediction of the carbon dioxide emissions with associated temperature rise for the most aggressive climate response from the IPCC in their special report “Global Warming of 1.5°C”. Ultimately, “Ecological restoration, if carefully implemented, can have a role in mitigating climate change, it is no substitute for the fact that most fossil fuel emissions will need to stop to meet the targets of the Paris Agreement”.

If our current climate policy pledges are upheld, then by the year 2050 we can expect a 3.0 degree Celsius increase in average global temperature; which is considered insufficient by the ‘Climate Action Tracker’ [7]. This would cause the sea level to raise up to 0.3 m [6] damaging coastal city infrastructure as well as habitat loss for fish and coastal species. As rising sea level coincides with more dangerous hurricanes and typhoons, unpredictable natural disasters will become more frequent. Which are already starting to occur and cause migration away from disaster affected regions. In fact the first of 2019 alone saw the displacement of a record 7 million people due to natural disasters; nearly twice that of conflicts in the same period [8].

This is not to say that planting trees is a bad thing. Tree plantations are environmentally harmful, but regeneration of natural forests is an effective way to increase climate resilience and biodiversity, as well as reducing climate change through CO2 absorption. But planting forests is hard; and it doesn’t produce much economical profit. But it's one of the best ways we can combat climate change. So next time a tree planting effort asks for your support, ask them “are you planting mixed forests or monocultures?”. As far as we can tell the Arbor Day foundation are not planting commercial monoculture plantations, and some of their projects are mixed species forests.

International government intervention is the most effective way to combat climate, however, we have yet to see any significant global action from any government. Regardless, the most important takeaway from TeamTrees is that large government action is not the only way to tackle climate change. Is it possible within the public sphere through small donations from large numbers of individuals who care about the future, to sway public opinion, gather funds and make a real impact on the global climate.

Although the numerical impact of #teamtress is likely small, this project is a powerful gesture supporting the climate change movement and raising awareness. This will undoubtedly sow the seeds for future large scale, public sector driven climate action. We would like to congratulate TeamTrees for achieving their goal, and for proving that the ability to regenerate our climate is within every individuals’ power. The challenge now for each of us is to maintain the momentum and keep searching for sustainable ways to clean up our environment.

[inquisidiego]

Great writing and editing! Improving the audio quality would take your content to the next level!

[svankensen]

Nice work. Nuanced. We need to educate everyone on environmental sciences so that we can make better decisions as a society. Best of lucks, keep up the good work.

[Manofthebloodborne]

Verry good!this video is soo great especially for your first video!

[FruitPastel]

Really interesting. Perhaps look in to using a better quality mic for future videos, but otherwise all good!

[darksca]

Really nice video dude. But from next time please make sure that the volume is constant and doesn't keep fluctuating.

[geopolitalk]

Very interesting! I actually just saw this off of reddit, I agree with most of the points you've made in it! :)

[magnusjohansson]

It's astounding that such major, well-funded projects are backed with minimal application of science and the ecological impacts of their actions not fully considered. It makes one wonder if they consulted anyone knowledgeable at all; it's like some of these organisations are simply disingenuous political gestures. It's not hard to understand monoculture plantations are a bad idea and that there's much more to ecology than planting trees; a simple YouTube video can explain that.. really makes one wonder.

[Mrcoyote-mf]

Planting trees without stopping deforestation will not be as effective as it needs to be, but if one day humans realize that their diet and daily habits are the main determinants of changes in carbon in the atmosphere and change their carbohydrate-based diet to an organic ketogenic diet.  then, due to the decrease in demand for agricultural products, deforestation will have a reverse trend, and also, the increase in demand for organic animal products will strengthen the soil and increase forests.  And at that time the trees will save us.  Bill Gates and who supports agriculture and zero carbon theory is an anti-life person. Humans cannot survive without carbon production, so the theory of zero carbon production is completely baseless.   But humans can return the excess carbon in the earth's atmosphere to the earth's crust through plants.

[jacksongayton]

Damn u put too much work into these videos for only 2K

[constablec]

Oi oi who has that sexy voice from 0:00 till 9:45 🤔😯