Climate: Trump Forest Grows Tall

A project to compensate for Donald Trump’s damaging climate policies by planting trees has gained 250,000 pledges with more than 1,000 backers including a growing number of British donors in just four months.

Eden Reforestation Project

The campaign is a collaboration with the Eden Reforestation project which is a California-based non-profit organisation that plants millions of trees every year on behalf of donors, businesses and foundations by employing local people in poverty-stricken areas of Haiti, Madagascar, Ethiopia, and Nepal.

Eden’s mission statement said its objective, “which we hope to achieve by the year 2020, is to plant a minimum of 100m trees each year and to offer hope through the employment of tens of thousands of people in countries where poverty is rampant.”

Supporters can donate to the Eden Reforestation project through Trump Forest or they can buy a tree through a local organisation and send a receipt to have it counted in the Trump Forest total.

Clean Power Plan

On March 28 Trump signed an executive order to rewrite the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan in the hope of reviving the US’s flagging coal industry.

“It is in the national interest to promote clean and safe development of our nation’s vast energy resources, while at the same time avoiding regulatory burdens that unnecessarily encumber energy production,” said the order.

“It is the policy of the United States that executive departments and agencies immediately review existing regulations that potentially burden the development or use of domestically produced energy.”

The minds behind Trump Forest launched the project the same month. “If executed in its entirety the Clean Power Plan would prevent approximately 650m tons of carbon dioxide from reaching the atmosphere over the next eight years,” they said. “The rhetoric sends a signal to the rest of the world that the government of the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases is not on board to meet this challenge. So let’s meet it for them.”

According to Trump Forest if it covers “an area of approximately 100,000 sq kms (37,000 sq miles), about the size of the US state of Kentucky, it will offset the additional carbon in the atmosphere if the Clean Power Plan is removed.”

Energy Caps

While the campaign is well-intentioned and worthy it remains simply an agent with a catchy headline for the Eden reforestation project. One of the organisers, Adrien Taylor, runs a sustainably-produced fashion line in caps called “Offcut” advertised with both a photograph and a link in the first paragraph of the Trump Forest “about” section. That little promotion is doubtless a reasonable backing for a well-designed campaign that is building strong momentum.

Dr Dan Price

Two years ago the project’s other main organiser, the British climate scientist Dr Dan Price, cycled 17,000km from Antarctica to Paris to raise awareness of climate change before the summit that agreed the landmark Paris Agreement.

“Every generation has a challenge. Our generation is met with the biggest to date. Climate change isn’t just an environmental issue, it is an ‘everything’ issue that will change everything,” he said.

“The most important meeting of modern times will take place in Paris this December when world leaders will decide how we will reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and try to take us off a path that will ensure a global crisis.” It is Donald Trump’s determination to get back on that fossil fuel path that is now being fiercely resisted by projects like the Trump Forest.

by Stewart Vickers

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