More than two dozen companies, cities, and organizations are embracing a pledge to help plant 1 trillion trees, a tactic to curb climate change that has even President Trump’s blessing.
Altogether, the participants will plant, restore, and conserve more than 855 million trees in the United States by 2030. Their pledges form the basis of the U.S. chapter of the “1 Trillion Trees” initiative, or 1t.org, the first nationwide effort to make the goal a reality.
“This is truly a historic moment for America because we’ve never had this kind of a diverse coalition come together in support of trees and forests,” said Jad Daley, CEO of American Forests. His nonprofit organization, the oldest forest conservation group in the country, is leading the U.S. chapter of 1t.org with the World Economic Forum.
In January, Trump announced the U.S. would join the trillion trees effort, launched at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Remarks by ETH Zurich ecologist Thomas Crowther, now the chief scientific adviser to the United Nations’s Trillion Tree Campaign, were the root of the initiative. His research found planting more than 1 trillion trees could wipe out a decades’ worth of carbon emissions.
Trump didn’t list climate change as a reason why the U.S. would join, but he and Republican lawmakers have used the effort to tout their environmental bona fides. Since then, Republican lawmakers have incorporated tree-planting as a pillar of their budding climate strategy.
House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy of California has called planting trees the “most efficient way on the planet to capture carbon” emissions. The 1t.org U.S. chapter “will enable a lasting effort to better serve our forests for decades to come,” said McCarthy, who is advising the coalition as part of a stakeholder council.
And as part of their sweeping climate plan, Democrats on the House climate committee suggest national goals to reforest 40 million to 50 million acres of U.S. lands. They also recommend planting new trees where possible, especially in urban areas.
“Healthy forests are one key component to addressing climate change, ensuring resilient ecosystems, and safeguarding our common environmental heritage,” said Rep. Debbie Dingell, a Michigan Democrat who is also a member of the 1t.org stakeholder council. Officials from the Department of Agriculture and the United States Agency for International Development are also serving as advisers.
Currently, U.S. forests remove roughly 15% of the country’s carbon emissions each year. Daley, who called trees “nature’s own carbon removal device,” said there’s potential to nearly double that rate of removal, to 27%, citing research from The Nature Conservancy.
“The single biggest pathway to do that is reforestation,” Daley told the Washington Examiner in an interview. “If you think about it, it’s kind of simple math: The more trees that we have, the more carbon sucking devices that we have out there.”
The U.S. 1t.org effort includes pledges to plant more trees in cities and to restore forests around the country that have been destroyed by wildfires, disease, climate change, and human activity such as farming and logging. Companies such as Clif Bar, Mastercard, and Timberland are committing to plant hundreds of thousands to millions of trees each.
Some companies, instead of planting trees, will help fund the efforts. Financing can be a big barrier to tree-planting efforts, Daley and others said. Bank of America, for example, is committing $300 billion in climate financing, and Amazon is pledging $100 million through its Right Now Climate Fund.
Other organizations, such as the National Association of State Foresters and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, are promising manpower and scientific resources. Beefing up the science behind these efforts will help ensure the trees being planted are species native to the area that won’t cause damage to the surrounding environment.
“It isn’t just planting a trillion trees,” said Elysa Hammond, senior vice president for environmental stewardship for Clif Bar & Company. The food company has committed to plant 750,000 trees through reforestation efforts by 2025 as part of its 1t.org pledge.
“What we really want to do is restore forest ecosystems,” Hammond, who has a background in ecosystem ecology, told the Washington Examiner in an interview. “That means when you’re planting trees, it’s the right tree and the right place.”
Clif Bar has been replanting trees since 2003, Hammond said. She pointed to an effort to regrow forests around the Great Lakes. When those efforts started, she said, a bird species called Kirtland’s warbler was on the endangered species list because its habitat was disappearing. As the forests have recovered, the bird was removed from the list.
More detailed science could also help make trees more resilient to worsening wildfires, drought, and other climate change effects.
Detroit, for example, is studying how vulnerable the city and its trees are to climate change to determine what types of trees it should be planting where, said Angel Squalls, an associate forester with the city’s general services department.
Cities such as Detroit and Dallas already had tree-planting and forest conservation in their climate plans, even before joining the 1t.org coalition. That’s because increasing their cities’ tree canopy offers several benefits.
Dallas is aiming to increase its tree canopy to 33% by 2030 and to 40% by 2050, planting roughly a quarter of a million trees over that time period.
Susan Alvarez, the city’s assistant director for environmental quality and sustainability, said the efforts will help the Texas city deal with extreme heat and improve air quality. Dallas currently doesn’t meet national ozone standards.
Detroit, which is promising to plant 50,000 trees, also hopes the effort will improve the city’s air quality and help it deal with stormwater runoff, Squalls said.
Nonetheless, despite all the hype, some Democrats and environmentalists have been hesitant to back the tactic because they fear it would distract from other policies to curb climate change, such as reducing fossil fuel use.
Daley, of American Forests, said regrowing forests and planting trees should be considered one pathway to fight rising emissions but not a substitute for other policies.
“It is not enough to plant trees,” Hammond of Clif Bar said. “That’s just one part of the solution, but we have to be grounded in creating a new energy system for the country. Clean transportation, clean energy, that must be fundamental.”
