Updated: Jun 16, 2023
The year was 2017, and it was a hot summer afternoon in Hawaii. Yishan Wong, the former CEO of Reddit, was trying to relax on a beach and enjoy the sunset. But he soon found that it was far too hot to lie down and enjoy his break.
“This planet has a climate change problem. I need to solve it,” he thought while laying down on the beach.
Mr. Wong started to dive deeper into the issue of CO2 in the atmosphere. He dug around in research papers for many years, and after all of his hard work, he found the perfect device to remove carbon from the air: trees.
Although trees aren’t the most effective machine to eradicate CO2 from the atmosphere, machines that do have the ability to be more effective are extremely expensive. All carbon removal devices remove only about 40 million metric tons of carbon per year, while the forests combined remove 7.6 billion metric tons annually.
Mr. Wong founded Terraformation in 2019 with the hope of reforesting 3 billion acres of land (which is bigger than the US) around the world. Yishan estimates that these forests will be able to halt global warming if achieved quick enough.
Terraformation isn’t the only one helping to plant trees. Other organizations include One Tree Planted, Arbor Day Foundation, 8 Billion Trees, TeamTrees, Trillion Tree Campaign, and etc.
However, as good as this solution sounds, many scientists have been apprehensive about this plan. Tree planting has many limitations due to it having the potential of harming the environment and the people living there. Planting trees where they don’t belong can wreak havoc on the ecosystem and interrupt the lives of people living nomadic lives or villages that depend on the biome of their plot of land.
The main limiting factor of this plan is that there isn’t enough land to support these trees, and much of this land isn’t suitable for trees. A recent study shows that nearly 1.7 billion acres are available for reforestation, which is under Terraformation’s goal of 3 billion.
Another limiting factor in tree planting is that there aren’t enough volunteering tree planters. These organizations can’t do it all themselves. We need everyone to stand up and help people plant trees. Go to your nearest tree planter today and donate as much as you are willing to, and help the world recover and blossom with new trees every day.
The year was 2017, and it was a hot summer afternoon in Hawaii. Yishan Wong, the former CEO of Reddit, was trying to relax on a beach and enjoy the sunset. But he soon found that it was far too hot to lie down and enjoy his break.
“This planet has a climate change problem. I need to solve it,” he thought while laying down on the beach.
Mr. Wong started to dive deeper into the issue of CO2 in the atmosphere. He dug around in research papers for many years, and after all of his hard work, he found the perfect device to remove carbon from the air: trees.
Although trees aren’t the most effective machine to eradicate CO2 from the atmosphere, machines that do have the ability to be more effective are extremely expensive. All carbon removal devices remove only about 40 million metric tons of carbon per year, while the forests combined remove 7.6 billion metric tons annually.
Mr. Wong founded Terraformation in 2019 with the hope of reforesting 3 billion acres of land (which is bigger than the US) around the world. Yishan estimates that these forests will be able to halt global warming if achieved quick enough.
Terraformation isn’t the only one helping to plant trees. Other organizations include One Tree Planted, Arbor Day Foundation, 8 Billion Trees, TeamTrees, Trillion Tree Campaign, and etc.
However, as good as this solution sounds, many scientists have been apprehensive about this plan. Tree planting has many limitations due to it having the potential of harming the environment and the people living there. Planting trees where they don’t belong can wreak havoc on the ecosystem and interrupt the lives of people living nomadic lives or villages that depend on the biome of their plot of land.
The main limiting factor of this plan is that there isn’t enough land to support these trees, and much of this land isn’t suitable for trees. A recent study shows that nearly 1.7 billion acres are available for reforestation, which is under Terraformation’s goal of 3 billion.
Another limiting factor in tree planting is that there aren’t enough volunteering tree planters. These organizations can’t do it all themselves. We need everyone to stand up and help people plant trees. Go to your nearest tree planter today and donate as much as you are willing to, and help the world recover and blossom with new trees every day.
