As a man, a husband and a father –

I believe my legacy is to leave the world a better place than I inherited. I’m not a believer or denier of climate change, what I am though is a concerned citizen.

I believe our earth and its weather are changing. I look at our earth and think that over the last 50 years we’ve been on this amazing food eating fest. Our world has changed, we eat more, we build more, we burn more, we pollute more, we do everything to excess. Now we’re bursting at the seams and we need a diet. So I started reading and over the last 2 years I’ve read some amazing statistics about our planet and what we can do to help it lose a few tonnes of carbon.

So here are some interesting points.

Carbon Neutral estimates that 15 trees can absorb one tonne of carbon dioxide, so 20 million trees will be able to absorb around 1.3 million tonnes. However, when you consider that humans pollute the atmosphere with 30 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide every year, it only makes a small dent. Nov 1, 2019

The Exponential Roadmap produced by an international group of experts, including Stanford Earth system scientist Rob Jackson, has published a roadmap of the most viable solutions for slashing greenhouse gas emissions globally by 2030.

One of many comments was, “But avoiding deforestation, in addition to reforestation and improved land management is a significant opportunity to reduce and sequester greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The authors estimate nature-based solutions could be used to sequester around 9 billion tons of CO2 annually by 2030.”

Christiana Figueres, former head of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and Convenor of Mission 2020, a partner organization in the roadmap, said, “I see all evidence that social and economic tipping points are aligning. We can now say the next decade has the potential to see the fastest economic transition in history. The 2019 Exponential Roadmap is an excellent guide for the necessary journey to net-zero emissions.”

Why just 17 trees? Humans pollute the atmosphere with 30 Billions tonnes of carbon per year. If we take the 9 Billion tonnes we can reduce through nature-based solutions and divide that by the worlds population of 7.8 Billion people, we get 1.2 tonnes per person. It takes 15 trees to save one tonne so that’s Just 17 Trees per person.

I’ve made it our mission to help our planet by asking everybody to plant just 17 trees a year, literally reversing our carbon output and hopefully leaving our planet better than when I found it.

In October 2020 we will launch a new movement to capture this 30% of the worlds carbon through tree planting and other means.

Come with me, so we can each “do our bit” together. Choose your trees

Charles Alder