Planting trees to take on climate change 'isn't as easy'

Editor’s note: The opinions in this article are the author’s, as published by our content partner, and do not represent the views of MSN or Microsoft. Hundreds of YouTubers are calling on their audiences today to donate money to the nonprofit Arbor Day Foundation, with every dollar raised turning into a tree seedling in the ground. Planting trees can have huge benefits for the ecosystem and the planet, reviving downed forests and helping to fight climate change by capturing the carbon we release when we burn fossil fuels. “It turns out that many of these seedlings, if you don’t do this well or if people do it who don’t really care about those trees, then they all just die quickly“ says, Eike Lüdeling, department head of horticultural sciences at the University of Bonn. ______________________________________________  More on our empowering the planet campaign: ____________________________________________________ Long-term survival is key for trees because for them to be able to offset the greenhouse gas emissions humans generate, they need to live for at least 100 years — roughly the amount of time that the carbon they capture would have stuck around in the atmosphere. Protecting those trees for the next century can be pretty precarious in the midst of political wrangling, like we’reseeing in the Amazon rainforest and as climate change intensifies wildfires in the US. “We’re just not planting and walking away,” Arbor Day Foundation director of public relations Danny Cohn tells The Verge. The foundation has a vetting process requiring that the partners they work with to plant the trees have a plan to help them thrive. “Few people realize that planting trees in the wrong places can actually damage ecosystems,increasewildfire intensity and exacerbate global warming.” Gallery: Photos Show The Devastation Taking Place In The Amazon Rainforest (Esquire UK) The Arbor Day Foundation says it partners with agencies like the US Forest Service, the National Park Service, and the National Association of State Foresters to ensure that they’re planting trees responsibly. That’s when researchers from Crowther Lab in Zurich published a paper finding that restoring forests could capture two-thirds of the planet-warming greenhouse gases humans have unleashed on the atmosphere since the IndustrialRevolution. Four different groups of scientists (including Lüdeling and Veldman) responded with their critiques, and one of their big concerns is that placing too much attention on tree planting takes away from the most important step to stopping a climate catastrophe: cutting down on burning fossil fuels. “We know that 20 million trees isn’t going to cure climate change, but the point here is to end this decade on a super strong note,” YouTuber Mark Rober says in the promotional campaign video.