What If We Planted a Trillion Trees?

WHAT IF

11/6/2023

How many trees are too many?

Transcript

00:00 It's dawn.

00:10 It's dark.

00:11 And you don't know what kind of weather

00:13 is waiting for you outside your tent.

00:15 It doesn't matter anyway.

00:17 In rain, hail,

00:19 sleet, snow, or blistering heat,

00:22 you're on the front lines,

00:24 shovel in hand,

00:26 wearing over 20 kg (15 lb) of gear,

00:28 battling against nature

00:30 to save the environment.

00:32 On a good day,

00:33 you might plant 2,000 trees

00:35 in a 10-hour shift.

00:37 But imagine if you had to do this every day

00:40 for the next 570,000 years.

00:44 This is WHAT IF,

00:46 and here's what would happen

00:48 if we planted 1 trillion trees.

00:51 It's true, tree planting is no picnic.

00:55 Bears,

00:57 bugs,

00:58 blisters,

00:59 unpredictable terrain,

01:02 unpredictable weather.

01:04 Up north, it wouldn't be uncommon

01:06 for a tree planter to pee on their own hands

01:08 to keep them from freezing.

01:10 Tree planting is undoubtedly

01:11 one of the world's hardest jobs.

01:14 So why would anyone do it?

01:16 Because if they didn't,

01:18 life would be much worse,

01:20 for everyone.

01:21 Since 1900,

01:23 Earth's average temperature has risen by 1°C (3°F).

01:26 That doesn't sound like much,

01:28 but just wait till you feel it.

01:30 If our planet becomes just 2°C (3°F) hotter

01:32 than it was in the 20th century,

01:34 heat waves, flooding,

01:36 crop failure,

01:37 and animal extinction will be commonplace.

01:40 Doing nothing about it would just be reckless,

01:43 demonstrating an extreme indifference

01:45 not just to human life,

01:46 but to all life on Earth.

01:48 You might even call it

01:50 second-degree murder.

01:51 Some ideas that have been put forward

01:56 for cooling the planet include

01:58 a giant space umbrella

01:59 to shield the Earth from the Sun,

02:01 or a giant space mirror

02:03 to reflect sun rays back into space.

02:06 Meanwhile, back on Earth,

02:08 we've already got trees

02:09 that absorb the harmful carbon emissions

02:11 that warm our planet,

02:12 while also expelling oxygen

02:14 so that we can breathe.

02:16 Problem is,

02:17 we just don't have enough of them

02:18 to do the job.

02:20 While the world is currently home

02:21 to roughly 3 trillion trees,

02:23 we lose about 10 billion of them every year.

02:26 And as you might expect,

02:28 we've become more efficient

02:29 at stripping our forests

02:31 than we are at replanting them.

02:33 As a consequence,

02:34 20% of the planet's greenhouse emissions

02:37 are caused by deforestation,

02:39 compared to 14% by transportation.

02:43 If we planted a trillion trees,

02:45 we could offset a decade's worth

02:47 of those emissions,

02:48 time that we desperately need.

02:50 But it will truly require

02:52 an international effort

02:53 to realize this goal.

02:55 If every human on Earth

02:57 planted just 150 trees,

02:59 we could meet our one trillion tree goal

03:02 quite easily.

03:03 But that's just not very realistic.

03:06 And while the world's tree planters

03:07 work long, hard days to pick up the slack,

03:10 there still aren't enough of them

03:12 to get the job done in time.

03:14 A study at Yale University

03:15 concluded that if we continue

03:17 our current rate of deforestation

03:19 without planting more trees,

03:21 our planet will be completely treeless

03:23 within 300 years.

03:25 Already, it's been calculated that

03:27 the world has lost half of its trees

03:29 since the last Ice Age.

03:31 Before we revisit the space umbrella idea,

03:34 let's consider some of the more feasible options

03:36 that are on the table.

03:38 Tree planting drones, for example,

03:40 can plant up to 100,000 trees a day,

03:43 the equivalent of about 50 veteran tree planters.

03:46 And while a lot of students

03:47 take up tree planting

03:48 as a lucrative summer job,

03:50 the more innovative ones

03:52 have found other ways to cash in.

03:54 But whether we do it by drones or by robots,

03:57 it's time to bring out the big guns

03:59 in this battle for our planet.

04:01 Planting a trillion trees

04:03 is still far ahead in our future.

04:05 But do you know what our world

04:07 would look like without them?

04:08 Well, that's a story for another WHAT IF.

04:12 ♪ ♪

04:17 you

What If We Planted a Trillion Trees?

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