Sometimes, the simplest, best advice on how to fight climate change is also the advice that’s most easily ignored.
Take planting a tree. If those of us at Team Earth had a nickel for every website that said something like, “Plant a tree, it’s good for the environment” … well, based on the 27,800,000 hits that “plant a tree” brings up on Google, we’d have about $1.4 million.
But sometimes, you hear things repeatedly because they just make sense.
Ponder this reminder from the amazing climate campaigners at 350.org. The title sums it up nicely: “Why tree planting is crucial.”
As the good 350.org folks point out, trees provide habitats and resources that many of the Earth’s creatures, including humans, rely on. They also store a massive amount of carbon – keeping that greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere, where it helps cause climate change.
Unfortunately, deforestation and logging around the world mean that many healthy trees are burned or chopped down. Today, deforestation accounts for about 16 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
One of the easiest ways to counterbalance that trend? You can plant a tree. One tree won’t change much, but when you consider how many trees even one-quarter of humans could plant, it adds up, no?
So the next time someone goes on about planting a tree, don’t mentally put them in the “Charlie Brown’s teacher” file. Think a little dirty: Get your hands in the muck and plant that tree.
Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/usfsregion5/| via Creative Commons
