The Trees Are Not Just Seeds and Seedlings

5min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

As a solution to the world's most pressing problems, the trees seemed both obviously useful and woefully uncertain. It would take much longer to see whether the trees, which were really just seeds and seedlings, would grow up into the forest that Santos envisioned. The tree planting visionaries, company founders and employees I spoke with insisted they had learned the lessons of past failures.

In the past decade, planting trees has come to represent many things: a virtuous act, a practical solution and a symbol of hope in the face of climate change. But can planting a trillion trees really save the world?

Visiting the Eden Reforestation Projects in Goiás, Brazil, and interviewing numerous international scientists and activists, the journalist Zach St. George offers a vivid insight into the root of the tree-planting movement — from the Green Belt Movement of the 1970s to the Trillion Tree Campaign of the 2010s — and considers the concept’s environmental potential, as well as the movement’s shortcomings.

This story was written by Zach St. George and recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.