How many trees do I have to plant to offset my poor life choices?
So far it's not 10.
Thanks for your email, and sorry for the delay.
I was standing in another café staring at the menu wondering whether soy milk or oat will make the world less on fire.
I was busy downloading apps to tell me what to buy, what to think, what to eat and when to sleep. Yet I’ve followed all the rules and nothing can shift this feeling that seeps into my waking thoughts like smoke.
The feeling of living in a world that is full of beautiful incredible things and yet built on broken foundations. That I am watching the systems we built slowly splinter and be swept away by wildfires and floods.
Living in climate change is living in a climate of change. Everything is changing and some of it will be good and some will be bad. And the idea of adapting to a radically different world from the one we grew up in is scary but if there’s one thing we know it’s that humans can do scary things.
Sometimes I get the feedback that the Green Fix contains an overwhelming number of links and solutions.
Good.
I want you to be overwhelmed by the opportunities. As the ground destabilises beneath us, I want you to let yourself be swept up in the chaos and abundance of the climate movement. Let the uncertainty of our future open us up to good whenever and wherever we find it.
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What’s Going On?
The climate crisis is forcing women and girls to sell their bodies as they get displaced due to floods and other disasters.
Useful: Why are women worst-affected by the climate crisis?Tech company Apple finally make it easier for customers to repair their own phones.
Related: Why does my phone break so easily and what can I do about it?Popular UK milk and dairy brands found linked to catastrophic deforestation.
Related: Just 7 products contributed to deforestation on a scale twice the size of Germany from 2001-2015.On that subject, the EU has proposed a law to ban product imports linked to deforestation.
Useful: Why is this a big deal?Fossil fuel companies have paid for ads spreading climate change denial for decades. Here’s the history they don’t want you to know about.
Extreme air pollution forces schools in New Delhi to close for a week.
Useful: Why is air quality so bad in New Delhi?More than a third of shoppers aiming to make Black Friday spending more eco-friendly, new UK survey finds.
Related: Here’s why you should give Black Friday a miss altogether.
Focus On… Tree Planting
Co-founder of tree-planting NGO 9 Trees, Michael Cunningham, tells The Green Fix writer Myriam Gambini why and how we should bring back the forests.
Could you tell us a bit about the 9 Trees initiative?
9 Trees is a not-for-profit organisation based in Wales that aims to plant nine trees per person, per year, for everyone in the UK.
The trees are chosen to work with the local habitat and we manage and cultivate a woodland around them after planting.
We plant as many trees as possible by linking landowners with people and businesses. We raise money through subscriptions, donations and businesses that want to balance their carbon footprints, and then put those profits back into training and education.
What made you start 9 Trees?
I started 9 Trees in March 2019, together with Ash Kent. An existential crisis led to this initiative.
I was flying to Nepal back and forth for humanitarian work. But I didn’t want to leave a big carbon footprint at the end of my life. So, I decided to reduce my consumption as much as I could, go flight free, and to sequester the amount of carbon that I had emitted.Â
At 9 Trees, we work in three main areas: creating a habitat for wildlife, improving people’s mental health by quelling eco-anxiety, and creating rural jobs.
Why is tree planting so important to tackle the climate crisis?
Since the industrial revolution, the amount of carbon in the atmosphere has increased nearly 50%. To mitigate the impact of these emissions, it’s crucial to sequester carbon and tree planting is the easiest method to sequester carbon.
[Useful: How do trees sequester carbon?]
It's a slow process, but we have been emitting carbon for hundreds and hundreds of years, and we have to start somewhere.Â
The UK used to be 75% woodland and it’s now only 13% woodland. Growing woodland is about doing something important for future generations and for wildlife.
In order for us to have a temperate climate to grow pastures and bring up our children, we have to do it now, not wait 25 years for it to happen naturally.
Even if we all went carbon neutral today, we would still have to sequester the amount of carbon we emitted in our lifetimes and our parents’ and grandparents' lifetimes. Even if we stopped all the harmful practices, the climate would still become warmer.Â
The carbon impact of one person per year in the UK is equivalent to 9 trees. If you're in Europe it's 13 trees. In America it is 24 trees a year. If you live in London and fly for business often you may have to plant 24 trees.
There is no real way to say what the best course of action is, because we have to do everything at the same time: reduce our consumption, stop buying lots of stuff, stop travelling around, stop eating so much meat, protect the rainforest that is already there and plant trees.
There is not one action that should come above the others, we need to do all of them as soon as possible.
Useful: [Why doubling tree cover will help stop climate chaos]
Who is involved in your projects?
We involve communities through volunteers that can do eco-mating, which means preventing weeds from growing around the tree, which is fundamental for the first 5 years of a tree’s life.
We also use local contractors to plant the trees and maintain them. We are very focused on employing people in the area. We hope by the end of 2023, that we will have a regional representative in each county and country within the UK.Â
How does 9 Trees help businesses to reduce carbon emissions?
We team up with carbon auditors GoCarbonPositive, CarbonLens and PlanetNeutral who do carbon audits of businesses and explain to them how to reduce their emissions. We also work with B-Corp businesses, who have got their own environmental assessment and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) evaluation.
We don’t do greenwashing nor do we team up with people who do not have a commitment to the environment.
[Useful: How to tell if a tree planting scheme is actually helping]
How can I support these kinds of projects?
We want people to foster their connection to nature. We want to create a woodland that you can visit to see and understand the wildlife of the UK and Europe. If you are passionate about the environment and want to make a change, you can sponsor a tree and we will create the woodland and manage it for 50 years.
If you are interested in tree planting, look for ways to learn how to plant trees and consider getting a job as a tree planter.
This is a climate crisis. We need everyone to get on board.
You can follow 9 Trees CIC on Instagram @9treesuk, Twitter @9treesUK and Facebook.
So Now What Do I Do?
LEARN
Watch BBC Media Action’s series of short videos sharing the experiences of communities in Kenya, Bangladesh and Nepal at the frontlines of the climate crisis.
How can we make sure the EU’s transition to carbon-neutrality is fair? Sign up to the European Youth Dialogues on the 29th November to join the debate.
Tune into this free webinar on the 8th December on the links between business and climate change. 13h30 CET.
TRY SOMETHING NEW
The European Week for Waste Reduction started this week! Find out how you can get involved here.
Stand up to the mindless consumption of Black Friday by supporting Fashion Revolution’s #LovedClothesLast campaign from 26th - 29th November.
[Bonus: Sign to #MakeAmazonPay its workers]Sign up for Traidcraft Exchange’s virtual injustice advent calendar for 24 ways to fight inequality and poverty.
CHANGE THE SYSTEM
Based in the UK? Tune into a #StopCambo welcome call today at 12.30 or 18.30 GMT to stand up to plans to build a new oil field.
Want to stand up to extreme poverty? Apply for One’s Global Youth Ambassador volunteer programme before 1st December.
The Global Warming Mitigation Project is offering $25,000 for the best climate action solutions around the world. Deadline February, or when 500 applications are submitted.
By the way…
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Stay in the loop
You can connect with The Green Fix on Twitter and LinkedIn. You can also say hi to me (Cass) directly via my Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.
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Hi Mischa
Thank you for your comments, we understand that data collected from various sources will show data differently, we have a blog post about why we chose 9Trees. We also understand that a mature tree absorbs 44lbs of carbon per year (roughly 22kgs as you suggested). We based our findings on a mixed broadleaf woodland.
There are many reasons we have simplified the calculations, as signing up to 9Trees is one way we can take our head out of the sand and take a step towards taking responsibility for your carbon footprint. I really appreciate the information you have suggested, and we would love to plant 577 trees every year for each person. We can only influence the present and our future.
We are continually hoping to attract people like yourself who have knowledge and would like to help us, and also people who would like to fund our activities. If anyone out there can give us the funds to plant 900 trees for them (a lifetime subscription) that is ideally what we are looking for. We hope people will find us and donate £9,000 or more today!
We want to ensure that the trees planted now reach maturity, which is why we enter into management agreements, for 50 years, to ensure these trees survive.Â
We could plant 10 year old trees but logistically it would be a nightmare; transportation / planting / Watering / £75+per tree, and someone will have to grow it to that age.
We can plant 577 trees for you this year so that in a decade's time you can reflect in your woodland and become Carbon Balanced.
However, asking someone to plant 577 trees may be quite overwhelming... maybe 9 trees every year is a good start?
Currently we want to make this available to many people in the UK and we also look at the longer-term objective; Creating functional ecosystems that store carbon both in the trees and soil. We don't just plant trees to sequester carbon. This is about Biodiversity, mental wellbeing and Livelihoods.
We would love your help on this and if anyone else has some great ideas or philanthropic friends do point them our way!
See our New options which we have been waiting to release to the public, although we thought it was a few years away;
https://www.9trees.org/subscriptions
I believe there's an error with your article statement "The carbon impact of one person per year in the UK is equivalent to 9 trees". According to data available online, The average UK citizen produces approx 12.7 tonnes of Carbon while your average 10 year old tree will sequester approx 22kg per year. This would take a minimum of 577 mature trees which are 10 years old to sequester the carbon and not 1 or 2 year old trees like the ones which get planted. Little trees will only sequester upto 6kg per year and would take 2,117 trees per person per year to sequester the average UK citizens carbon emissions. Each tree will sequester different amounts of carbon depending on species, location and conditions. A lot more research will need to go into our full impact on this ecosystem and we certainly need to plant a lot more trees.