People deal with anxiety in different ways.
Some people stress clean, some people stress shop.
And when it comes to our climate anxiety,
well, we've been stress planting.
Officials in Ethiopia
say a new record has been set with more
than 200 million trees planted in just one day.
Today we will be planting 20 million trees.
Who's against the trees?
I mean the tree, everyone's for the trees.
23 year old Quebecer Antoine Moses
broke the world record for the amount of trees planted.
Important people around the world agreed and decreed
that planting trees is a great path
towards climate redemption.
We can get real on coal, cars, cash and trees.
But as we start to realize how problematic
tree planting programs can be,
is this path truly as redeeming as we thought?
The idea of planting trees to solve the climate crisis
has taken off in recent years.
Everyone and their mother are behind it.
Seriously, my mom loves planting trees.
It's funny 'cause my mom is actually known like
in the local area we grew up for as a tree planter,
like a controversial tree plant planter.
Okay.
In the 2019 UK general election, parties fought over
who can out-plant one another.
It makes everyone look good.
The logic is clear.
Trees absorb a lot of carbon.
The bigger the tree gets, the more of it there is
and the more carbon is absorbed from the air.
Exactly what we need.
It's hard to pinpoint what started this craze.
Some say it was the 2011 Bond Challenge.
The largest restoration initiative
the world has ever known.
Others chalk it up to the controversial 2019 paper,
which argued that planting trees
is our most effective climate solution to date.
This was picked up by almost 600 media outlets
and inspired all sorts of mass initiatives.
And here we are today,
in a world where climate solutions
are extremely complicated and technical.
The simplicity of putting a tree in the ground
is refreshing and reassuring.
A breakthrough in the fight against pollution
and dirt is the inimitable unique irreplaceable tree.
But it's also the reason why we've taken this
solution a little bit too far.
If the idea that you can simply invest a little money
and make your carbon footprint disappear sounds
too good to be true, that's because it absolutely is.
And in our quest to meet demand
from individuals, governments, and corporations,
we're disregarding the complicated nature
of our forest ecosystem.
And this can be hugely damaging to the environment.
We're planting almost 2 billion trees a year
around the world, and we're doing that
through many tree planting programs that simply don't work.
In 2019 in Turkey, 11 million trees were planted
in just one day, but many were planted
at the wrong time and in the wrong place.
And although the government denies it
the country's forestry union claims
that 90% of the saplings died within months.
Tree planting also requires way too much land
and can potentially take away
from land that we need to grow food
and support existing ecosystems and habitats.
And we're starting to do some frankly
stupid things to find room
for all the trees we need to plant.
Like literally chopping down other trees
so that we can plant new ones.
Seriously, are we actually doing that?
Crazy.
Not to mention we are screwing
with biodiversity along the way.
Most large scale tree planting programs
are monoculture plantations,
meaning that only one or two types of trees are planted.
Species that are often not native
to the area and fast growing.
These plantations disrupt natural ecosystems
and often decreased biodiversity.
For example, according to recent research,
mass tree planting efforts
in China and Brazil are responsible
for actually degrading vast areas of land.
And the legal loopholes don't help either.
Tree plantations are technically classified
as forests by the U.N., so they get blindly pushed
as solutions to reverse deforestation.
You know what else qualifies as a forest?
London?
Seriously.
It has enough trees to meet the legal U.N. definition.
We pat ourselves on the back
for replacing one forest with another forest.
Problem fixed.
This is causing complacency
which is another huge problem when it comes
to the tree planting craze.
All this work on one solution makes us think
that we've solved the entire climate crisis
which is a whole world of wrong.
Because this crisis is complicated.
And whether we like it or not
the solutions are complicated too.
Planting trees can distract from the core issues
of the climate crisis like burning fossil fuels
and the socioeconomic pressures that led us here
in the first place.
Let's make one thing clear.
Planting trees is not in itself a bad thing.
There's actually a lot of evidence
that when it's done properly, it works.
In Brazil, 2.7 million native trees have been planted
in this southern region.
This region is home
to vulnerable species like this little guy.
Isn't he cute?
These trees ended up creating forest corridors
that helped tamarin populations recover.
But you know why it worked in this case?
Because the trees planted were native to the land
which means that they were useful
to the locals who built their lives around that resource.
Consulting indigenous communities was crucial
in the success of this project.
But ironically, what's simpler
than planting trees is, well, protecting trees.
Letting forests grow back is not only cheap and easy
but also more effective at our ultimate goal.
Sucking carbon out the atmosphere.
Natural and biodiverse forest can store
up to 40 times more carbon than plantations.
Like a fine wine, trees only get better with age.
They stand grand and majestic,
witness to humanity's time here on earth.
They're also efficient beings,
always working to make this planet a better place for us.
So as far as this problem is concerned,
maybe the answer isn't some radical human innovation
but maybe the best thing we can do is to simply get
out the way and let nature do its thing.