Plant 1 Trillion Trees & Say Goodbye To Global Warming & Climate Change, Says Study

Climate change, acid rain, global warming, floods, forest fires are all adverse results of man’s exploitation of earth and nature. And, the solution of this havoc ultimately lies with us humans. It’s high time we start planting trees, curbing pollution and getting rid of plastic to save our planet and ourselves from the wrath of nature.

In case you lack a clear picture of the amount of destruction we have already caused, as well as the efforts we need to put in to repair our environment completely, read on.

A recent study by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology gives an estimate of the number of trees humans need to plant to banish the imminent calamity that is climate change.

According to the study, restoring our forest cover can help reduce the carbon dioxide levels in the environment by 25%.

“We all knew restoring forests could play a part in tackling climate change, but we had no scientific understanding of what impact this could make,” said Tom Crowther, the ETH Zurich environmental systems scientist that led the research.

“Our study shows clearly that forest restoration is the best climate change solution available today and it provides hard evidence to justify the investment. If we act now, this could cut carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to levels last seen almost a century ago,” he added.

During photosynthesis, trees absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen. The study suggests that a 1 billion hectare increase in forests could limit global warming to an increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2050.

According to the data collected by the researchers, our planet can support about 4.4 billion hectares of the forest without removing cities or farmland. But at present, only about 2.8 billion hectares of forest exists, which means there are more than 1.6 billion hectares available for forest restoration.

The study also shows where in the world these trees 1 trillion trees could be planted. Russia has the most space at 583,000 square miles (1.5 million square km), followed by the United States at 397,700 square miles (1 million square km), the researchers found. Followed by Canada with 302,700 square miles (784,000 square km), Australia with 223,900 square miles (578,900 square km), Brazil with 191,900 square miles (497,000 square km), and China with 155,200 square miles (402,000 square km) available for new green shoots.

So if we join hands to enforce reforestation around the world, we can successfully eliminate the hazardous carbon dioxide and save ourselves from global warming. “This is beautiful thing, just to think that to fight climate change what you have to do is to plant trees and you can do that everywhere,” ecologist Jean-Francois Bastin said.

So let’s start by doing our bit to restore forest cover and vegetation on the Earth. It is a hail Mary to save our planet from the huge devastation brought on by climate change and global warming.