How many trees are too many?
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00:00 It's dawn.
00:10 It's dark.
00:11 And you don't know what kind of weather
00:13 is waiting for you outside your tent.
00:15 It doesn't matter anyway.
00:17 In rain, hail,
00:19 sleet, snow, or blistering heat,
00:22 you're on the front lines,
00:24 shovel in hand,
00:26 wearing over 20 kg (15 lb) of gear,
00:28 battling against nature
00:30 to save the environment.
00:32 On a good day,
00:33 you might plant 2,000 trees
00:35 in a 10-hour shift.
00:37 But imagine if you had to do this every day
00:40 for the next 570,000 years.
00:44 This is WHAT IF,
00:46 and here's what would happen
00:48 if we planted 1 trillion trees.
00:51 It's true, tree planting is no picnic.
00:55 Bears,
00:57 bugs,
00:58 blisters,
00:59 unpredictable terrain,
01:02 unpredictable weather.
01:04 Up north, it wouldn't be uncommon
01:06 for a tree planter to pee on their own hands
01:08 to keep them from freezing.
01:10 Tree planting is undoubtedly
01:11 one of the world's hardest jobs.
01:14 So why would anyone do it?
01:16 Because if they didn't,
01:18 life would be much worse,
01:20 for everyone.
01:21 Since 1900,
01:23 Earth's average temperature has risen by 1°C (3°F).
01:26 That doesn't sound like much,
01:28 but just wait till you feel it.
01:30 If our planet becomes just 2°C (3°F) hotter
01:32 than it was in the 20th century,
01:34 heat waves, flooding,
01:36 crop failure,
01:37 and animal extinction will be commonplace.
01:40 Doing nothing about it would just be reckless,
01:43 demonstrating an extreme indifference
01:45 not just to human life,
01:46 but to all life on Earth.
01:48 You might even call it
01:50 second-degree murder.
01:51 Some ideas that have been put forward
01:56 for cooling the planet include
01:58 a giant space umbrella
01:59 to shield the Earth from the Sun,
02:01 or a giant space mirror
02:03 to reflect sun rays back into space.
02:06 Meanwhile, back on Earth,
02:08 we've already got trees
02:09 that absorb the harmful carbon emissions
02:11 that warm our planet,
02:12 while also expelling oxygen
02:14 so that we can breathe.
02:16 Problem is,
02:17 we just don't have enough of them
02:18 to do the job.
02:20 While the world is currently home
02:21 to roughly 3 trillion trees,
02:23 we lose about 10 billion of them every year.
02:26 And as you might expect,
02:28 we've become more efficient
02:29 at stripping our forests
02:31 than we are at replanting them.
02:33 As a consequence,
02:34 20% of the planet's greenhouse emissions
02:37 are caused by deforestation,
02:39 compared to 14% by transportation.
02:43 If we planted a trillion trees,
02:45 we could offset a decade's worth
02:47 of those emissions,
02:48 time that we desperately need.
02:50 But it will truly require
02:52 an international effort
02:53 to realize this goal.
02:55 If every human on Earth
02:57 planted just 150 trees,
02:59 we could meet our one trillion tree goal
03:02 quite easily.
03:03 But that's just not very realistic.
03:06 And while the world's tree planters
03:07 work long, hard days to pick up the slack,
03:10 there still aren't enough of them
03:12 to get the job done in time.
03:14 A study at Yale University
03:15 concluded that if we continue
03:17 our current rate of deforestation
03:19 without planting more trees,
03:21 our planet will be completely treeless
03:23 within 300 years.
03:25 Already, it's been calculated that
03:27 the world has lost half of its trees
03:29 since the last Ice Age.
03:31 Before we revisit the space umbrella idea,
03:34 let's consider some of the more feasible options
03:36 that are on the table.
03:38 Tree planting drones, for example,
03:40 can plant up to 100,000 trees a day,
03:43 the equivalent of about 50 veteran tree planters.
03:46 And while a lot of students
03:47 take up tree planting
03:48 as a lucrative summer job,
03:50 the more innovative ones
03:52 have found other ways to cash in.
03:54 But whether we do it by drones or by robots,
03:57 it's time to bring out the big guns
03:59 in this battle for our planet.
04:01 Planting a trillion trees
04:03 is still far ahead in our future.
04:05 But do you know what our world
04:07 would look like without them?
04:08 Well, that's a story for another WHAT IF.
04:12 ♪ ♪
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