- What comes to mind when you think about cloning?
Is it maybe the horror film "Us" or maybe even
Barbra Streisand's cloned dog Samantha.
Whatever it may be, I doubt it's trees,
like this baby redwood I'm holding.
Actually, all of these trees are clones of redwoods.
Now these are trees that could grow up to 300 feet tall,
as tall as a building with 30 floors.
In one lifetime, which can be up to 3,000 years,
one of these trees can sequester up to 250 tons of carbon,
which is equivalent to 49 gas-powered cars driven
in just one year.
But wait, I actually wanna know how you clone trees
in the first place.
Are they superior to regular trees?
Are there any risk and challenges in the process?
And are they better at mitigating the climate change?
Let's find out.
On today's episode of "Can It Save the Planet,"
I will be cloning trees.
I am visiting the Archangel Tree Archive Facility
where they're cloning the world's largest tree
in hopes that they could help fight climate change
and save the species.
I'll be talking to an arborist to ultimately find out
if cloning trees can save the planet.
Sponsored by UNDO.org.
We've all heard it before.
Planting more trees can help mitigate the climate crisis.
Even the 2019 IPCC Report suggested it,
stating that planting about one billion hectares
of new forests is one path
to limiting global temperature increases
to 1.5 degree Celsius by 2050.
There can be a problem with planting trees though.
It has potential to be successful and very impactful,
but there has been a lot of greenwashing
around certain campaigns
so it seemed kind of pointless
for me to continue reporting on that story
because planting more trees can't save the world alone,
but then I stumbled upon the Archangel Tree Archive,
a nonprofit with the mission
of creating living libraries of old grove tree genetics.
That's cloning and they're specifically cloning redwoods,
which are an endangered tree species
known for their superior carbon sequestration capabilities.
That makes me wonder if planting cloned trees
can help accelerate reforestation efforts
and increase the impact of planting campaigns.
For that, I'll have to travel to Michigan and find out.
I've arrived at the Ancient Tree Archive Facility
in Copemish, Michigan, to talk to co-founder David Milarch.
David has been leading propagation
and reforestation efforts for more than 40 years.
- We were told it's impossible.
It'll never work.
You guys live in Northern Michigan in a remote area.
You haven't read the books.
You haven't studied with the experts.
That's the resistance that we've had for 25 years,
but I'm happy to say we have 130 species of trees,
70 different cloche redwoods, four or five sequoias,
all the largest and oldest on the planet.
It works.
- You said you started all of this because of necessity,
but now your core mission is to help fight
and mitigate the climate crisis.
- It's all always been about climate change.
Solutions, viable, tangible, doable solutions
to reverse climate effects,
reverse the overheating of this planet.
So we went into scientific study
around the world with dendrologists and universities.
How many trees would it take and what kind of CO2 uptake
would it take to halt climate change
and then start to reverse it?
And I'm happy to say if you were to plant
one old growth giant sequoia,
and we have thousands of them here,
that will negate all of your carbon debt
of your entire life, your heat,
your clothing, your car, it'll sequester enough CO2
that when you leave the planet,
you'll owe the planet zero for adding to its carbon debt.
- Now are cloned redwoods superior to regular redwoods?
Is there any alteration within the DNA
or the genetic sequencing?
- So to get the exact genetic fingerprint
of a 3,000 year old tree,
you have to use a clone, not a seedling.
And by the way, 99% of all coast cloche redwoods
don't live to be 1,000 years old.
The trees we're cloning are two to 3,000 years old
and nobody knows how they're able to do that.
And they're still alive.
So we've planted some of these trees
13 years ago in San Francisco
and these trees are over 50 feet tall
with a trunk on 'em about 14 inches in diameter.
In 20 years, planting any one of these 18 inch tall trees,
we know they'll be over 100 feet tall and at chest height,
I won't be able to touch my hands around that trunk
so they're picking up CO2 about 10 to 12 times faster
than almost any species of trees on earth.
- [Alejandro] All right, so these trees seem super powered
and ready to save the world,
but there are a couple things to consider
when planting cloned trees, according to David.
- We only recommend planting 10% of the forest
with these clones.
We hand select them for big, old, healthy genetics,
but we make seedlings where 90%
of the trees are seedlings for genetic diversity
and only 10% of these clones, that's important.
We don't wanna plant monocultures.
- [Alejandro] Avoiding monocultures is one thing,
but David said avoiding greenwashing is a bigger problem.
- Greenwashing in the environmental world
seems to be a pandemic in itself these days.
There's lots of corporations, politicians,
there's lots of other environmental organizations
that to get the funding,
or to keep the cash flow going,
they will say and do almost anything.
Some of the reforestation projects that I know about,
there's a 95% loss of trees.
We will not plant, we will not give out trees
that don't have a three-year watering maintenance program.
- Great to know.
What I'm dying to know now is how to clone trees.
- That is in the other room and that's where we'll go next.
- Right after my interview and tour of the facility
with David, I went to the tissue culture lab with Jim Clark,
a tissue culture specialist at the Archangel Tree Archive
to learn where the magic happens.
Can you tell me a little bit more about the cloning process?
How long does it take?
What does it look like?
- The process itself might take all day,
but we can summate the process in just a few minutes.
This is a very technical process.
It's a laboratory procedure.
- Well, should we just get to it and see how it goes?
- Yeah and then you'll understand why the magic
behind tissue culture.
- [Alejandro] Turns out the process
is more or less simple, but long.
I'd say it's similar to propagating plants at home,
but requires special equipment
and the right conditions for it to be successful.
- Step one is to take a piece of the plant itself.
We call that a X plant
and we introduce it onto sterilized auger.
- And this is a sample from a giant sequoia.
- It is, it's a 4,000 year old giant sequoia,
what we call an ancient tree.
We're gonna reach in with our forceps.
Once you get your piece of X plant, shake off the water.
- [Alejandro] Let's see, oh, this one's cute.
Okay, wait, let me get it.
- Now you have to get that lid off.
Nicely, you've done this before.
- Yeah, I mean, I cheated.
- And then you put it in.
Try to stick it in just naturally.
- [Alejandro] Do I have to like poke a hole in there?
- [Jim] You have to poke it right into the auger mixture.
Just poke it right down in so it stands up.
- This is not working for me.
All right, I got it. - You got it.
- Finally, all right.
- Bravo, you, that is perfect.
You just close the lid, just press it down and we're done.
Now you need to put a date on it and then we're finished.
- Nice, that was so easy.
And that's cloning.
- That is cloning by tissue.
This is how you make a lot of trees in a very small space.
- All right, well, that was amazing.
I learned so much about cloned trees
and their history and all of their benefits.
I'm going back home now knowing that cloned trees
can help reforestation efforts around the world,
so back to New York we go.
Now while I make my way back to NYC,
I want to take a moment to thank UNDO.org
for sponsoring this episode.
They teamed up with us because there's an urgent issue
that deserves more attention now,
the massive microplastics problem
'caused by cigarette butts.
Each year, the tobacco industry produces
more than six trillion cigarettes and cigarette butts,
they're one of the most littered items on earth
and they're made with microplastics.
Microplastics have been found in our food, our water,
the air, and inside of us.
Recent studies even indicate links
between microplastics and mutations in DNA.
To learn more about how you can get involved,
visit UNDO.org.
Now, back to the episode.
All right, now that we've seen
what cloning looks like, let's recap.
So far we've learned, one, according to Milarch,
ancient trees are the best tree to clone
because of their genetic memory and storage capabilities.
Number two, cloning can be scaled up.
And number three, planting more trees can be a solution,
we just need to plant the right trees.
There's already places in the world that have had success
with reforestation and forest conservation.
For example, in 2017,
India broke the world record of planting trees
by planting 66 million trees in just 12 hours.
China is another example
of successfully greening the planet.
And according to NASA, all this greening of the earth
has a strong cooling effect on the planet
because of the increased efficiency
of heat and water vapor transfer into the atmosphere.
So if we efficiently plant more trees,
we can limit global warming to 1.5 degree Celsius by 2050,
as is the goal.
If we were to plant regular trees,
we could sequester about 205 gigatons of carbon
in the next couple decades.
But if we were to successfully plant clones
of ancient trees like redwoods,
and they thrive in new areas,
then we'd be multiplying the amount of carbon
we remove from the atmosphere by a lot.
Here's some light math for context.
A normal tree can sequester about one ton of carbon
in its lifetime, but a redwood or a cloned redwood
can sequester about 250 times as much carbon.
Now I'm no mathematician, but that's a lot more oxygen.
And let's not forget that carbon sequestration
is not the only benefit to more trees.
Forests would also help promote biodiversity,
reduce erosion, and improve water quality.
So yes, cloned trees can help save the planet.
Emphasis on "can help" because there's a caveat.
Tree-planting initiatives alone won't do the job.
As the Natural Resources Defense Council has pointed out,
we need to make sure there's thorough policies in place
that protect forest conservation
and reforestation efforts alike.
For example, the Trillion Trees Act in the US
aims to plant one trillion trees over the next 30 years,
but nowhere in the bill does it say we also need to reduce
or eliminate our fossil fuel use
because fossil fuels only increase our CO2 emission levels,
which increases the intensity of droughts and wildfires
out West and results in a redwood struggling to survive,
even though they're fire-resistant.
It's also important to note that cloned trees
still need more research.
There's some concern from critics
that cloning could affect trees from naturally reproducing
in the long run, or that focusing on cloning
just one loan species, like redwoods,
could impact diversity and the ecosystem.
Then there's a question of whether or not they
can just be planted anywhere and thrive,
although as of now the clones seem to be doing just fine.
And what was once deemed impossible
is now potentially a viable solution to our future.
(upbeat music)