He consulted Google for his research. Google steered him elsewhere—to stories about Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan woman whose heroic campaign to recover barren land that had been sheared of trees resulted in the planting of 30 million saplings and won her, in , the Nobel Prize. His report about trees was a hit and as a dramatic close, Finkbeiner laid down the challenge to plant one million trees in Germany.
No one expected anything to come of it. If he had known then how much international media coverage that crab apple would receive, he says now, a little ruefully, he would have insisted his mother buy a more majestic first tree.
By the time he delivered his speech at the UN in New York in , at the age of 13, Germany had planted its millionth tree, and Plant-for-the-Planet had been officially launched. It had a website and a full-time employee.
He was so young. Very impressive. One of the largest projects now is a reforestation effort underway on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.
The group built a nursery that contains , seedlings of native trees and plans ultimately to plant 10 million trees by Larger ambitions prompted new questions. Did the 14 billion trees already planted make any difference? Would 10 million in Mexico? Can planting keep up with the continuing deforestation around the world? No one knew. Scientists have long considered conducting a tree census, but until then, no one had done one. Enter Tom Crowther and his team at Yale.
The two-year study, published in Nature in , found that the Earth has 3 trillion trees—seven times the number of previous estimates. The study found that the number of trees on the planet since the dawn of agriculture 12, years ago has fallen by almost half—and that about 10 billion trees are lost every year. It is amazing. Scaling up means Plant-for-the-Planet now aims to plant one trillion trees.
Those trees could absorb an additional 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year; Finkbeiner says that will buy time for the world to get serious about reducing carbon emissions. All we can do is push them in the right direction. All rights reserved. Join us in The People v. Climate Change and share an environmental portrait of someone taking positive steps to protect the Earth on YourShot or social media. Use MyClimateAction to share a first-person perspective on how we as humans face climate change.
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