Our Hope For The Future
How does it help the birds and the bees
If we were to plant one billion trees?
It is not just food/habitat for them that we nurture
It is also our CLIMATE, “our hope for the future.”
© Forrest W. Heaton 29 April 2022
After reading an April ‘22 email re reforestation from The Nature Conservancy (TNC), one of the environmental groups that we support, Mary & I: 1) donated to plant trees via this program, and 2) decided to write a blog post on it. With one donation, we do something important to: “represent a hope for the future,” and “help put a real climate solution into action.” We are in hopes this blog post might encourage some readers to consider the same.
Who is The Nature Conservancy? TNC is “the world’s largest environmental nonprofit working to advance conservation in all 50 states and U.S. territories and 70 countries around the world.”
In their April email, TNC explained “What is Plant a Billion Trees? The Nature Conservancy’s Plant a Billion Trees campaign is a major forest restoration program. Our goal is to plant a billion trees across the planet to slow the connected crises of climate change and biodiversity loss.”
“A Billion Begins With One. A lot can change in a lifetime, including the planet we live on. For better, or for worse. But we have the power to restore balance. Helping our planet is bigger than us, but it starts with each of us. Help us plant, protect, and restore forests by planting your tree today.”
You may have read the 13Jul22 NYT article entitled “”Can Planting a Trillion New Trees Save the World” or other similar articles that suggest more negative coverage. Our take on this is that, yes, these programs can be better managed but, yes, planting trees in a world of an estimated 10 billion net tree loss annually makes sense. Can we do a better job of tree selection, land selection, restoration and protection? Yes! But that should not deter donation/planting to eventually achieve perennial net tree gain.
TNC estimates that, to date, TNC Plant a Billion Trees Program has planted more than 93 million trees globally! This is a big number—restoring U.S. forests across nine U.S. states as well as forests internationally.
Why do we recommend supporting this program?
Trees Are A Climate Solution. Trees remove carbon from the air, store carbon in the trees and soil, and release oxygen into the atmosphere.
Investment In Our Future. As TNC advises, donating to this program is an “investment in our future.”
A Gift. A friend also recommending support of high-quality tree-planting programs advised: “A more personal reason for planting a billion trees is as a kind of present they leave to their grandchildren and future generations.”
“Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.”
John Muir
“The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
