Photo courtesy of World Rainforest Movement

A new piece in Rolling Stone lambastes the notion that we will solve the climate crisis merely by planting a trillion new trees.

Many of these trillion new trees would take the form of industrial tree plantations. Such plantations are already notorious for displacing indigenous and rural populations, sucking dry ground water, and replacing life-giving native forest with tree monocultures inundated with toxic chemicals. And they burn.  In 2017, Chile, Portugal and Spain saw historic wildfires—the result of plantations, drought and heatwave.

All that carbon re-released into the atmosphere.

Rolling Stone points out,

“The idea that we’re going to solve the climate crisis by planting a trillion trees is a particular kind of lunacy, and a great example of what happens when bad science hooks up with do-gooderism and they sleep together in a bed of political expediency.”

Truly addressing climate change will require an end to fossil fuels, and a massive decrease in consumption in countries like the US. 

We cannot plant a new planet.

For the Earth Minute and the Sojourner Truth show, this is Anne Petermann from Global Justice Ecology Project.