By Greg Walcher
In 1989, the U.S. Forest Service published a 13-page booklet (Program Aid No. 1442) titled “Trees are the answer… to America’s growing environmental concerns.” The Society of American Foresters turned it into a bumper sticker, and by the end of the 1990s, cars across the country proclaimed, “Trees are the answer.”
During that same period, the global warming movement escalated, heightening worldwide concern about CO2, so the link between the two was inevitable. Human activity moves CO2 into the atmosphere – trees absorb it. A 9-year-old German student named Felix Finkbeiner started Plant-for-the-Planet, proposing that he and other kids plant a million trees in their own countries. He came to the UN, which had proposed a “billion trees program,” and Finkbeiner’s group turned it into the “Trillion Trees Initiative.” The group now has 30 employees, affiliated groups in eight countries, and has planted 100 million trees. An affiliated program on the Yucatan Peninsula has planted 17 billion.
The Trillion Trees Initiative caught the attention of world leaders, and President Trump, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2020, committed the U.S. to participation. His State of the Union message promoted the idea to Congress, touting the effort by both government and the private sector in planting trees across the U.S. and around the world.
Congress’s only forester, Rep Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), introduced the Trillion Trees Act to finance tree planting and provide tax credits for sustainable wood products. He cited an American Academy for the Advancement of Science report suggesting that a trillion trees could capture 205 giga-tons of carbon, two-thirds of all manmade carbon in a century. Sixty-seven congressmen of both parties cosponsored the bill before a heavily publicized committee hearing.
Trump held a White House tree-planting ceremony on Earth Day, calling the tree the first of the trillion, “a very big deal.” Two days later, his Arbor Day message again cited the Trillion Trees Initiative. That fall, an executive order created the One Trillion Trees Interagency Council to coordinate federal participation through 2030. It never convened.
The 2020 election intervened, and the initiative was scarcely ever mentioned again. President Biden refocused the entire conservation agenda, mostly on climate change. Planting trees around the world was never part of his program. Nor has the idea been mentioned again since Trump’s return to the White House in 2025. No new speeches, executive actions, or press releases mentioning the Trillion Trees Initiative.
The issue also lost momentum on Capitol Hill. The 2020 hearing was the only one ever held on Westerman’s bill, though he is now the powerful chairman of the Natural Resources Committee. He has demonstrated the capacity to move substantial forestry legislation. The committee has held hearings and markups and reported numerous measures dealing with forest management, wildfire prevention, reforestation, and the federal forestry workforce. Yet Westerman has not even reintroduced his signature Trillion Trees Act.
What happened to an initiative so universally lauded just five years ago? It’s simple – groups determined to stop the use of fossil fuels figured out that the tree initiative could become a strong antidote to their CO2 alarmism, so they needed to shut it down. First, some scientists challenged the math on how much CO2 a trillion trees could absorb. They said planting that many trees would destroy grasslands that are ecologically valuable precisely because they aren’t forests. The environmental industry said promoting new seedlings would detract from saving old growth. They said Westerman just wanted to promote logging, and Trump just wanted to protect polluters. They called the idea “greenwashing,” a “fig-leaf solution” that allowed policymakers to sidestep the “fossil-fuel problem.”
That’s all politics – nothing to do with trees. Experts may differ on how much CO2 a trillion trees might absorb, but does it matter? The U.S. Geological Survey says 91 million metric tons of carbon are naturally stored every year, mostly by trees.
A trillion new trees is not an outlandish goal. The earth already has roughly 3 trillion trees, 300 billion in the U.S., 11 billion in Colorado alone. Americans already plant 2.5 billion new trees annually, and if we doubled that, the U.S. would meet its share of the global goal within 30 years. U.S. wildfires have burned perhaps 100 billion trees in the last 20 years, so imagine the benefit of simply replacing those.
All the environmental regulations, conferences, summits, and studies have failed to convince people to stop using energy to enhance their lives. Imagine all that time and money spent planting trees. Trees are the answer.
I’m 82 and I don’t remember any “Trees are the Answer” bumper stickers.
I’m 55 and never saw such a thing.
Me neither. Nevertheless, it is an interesting story.
I loved “Who dies with the most toys wins”
But maybe not “Helmet laws suck”
Planting more trees may not be a bad idea, but anyone naive enough to think such action will have a major effect on reducing emissions and slowing whatever warming is occurring needs to give his head more than just a shake. The major emitters will continue their steady fossil fuel consumption to accelerate their economic growth and the well-being of their populations well before they take any of the hit-or-miss climate control steps recommended by the environmentalists.
And the added CO2 emissions will have very little effect on global temperature as Happer, Wijngaarden and the study of ancient history has clearly shown.
Planting a trillion trees = more future forest fires.
Another problem is a lot of these tree planting programs have resulted in fields of dead saplings because no provisions were made to water them until they grew large enough to create their own water condensing micro climate – or the tree species planted were unsuitable for the local climate.
Botanists who actually know things about what’s being planted are good people to have involved. Case in point, Henry Ford, seeking to expand his vertical integration of owning every part of the manufacturing process for his vehicles. Rubber for tires and other parts was a large flow of money going out of the company. So he decided to establish his own rubber tree plantation in South America, with no rubber tree experts nor any kind of botanists involved. He had rubber trees planted in close rows as one would fast growing trees like poplars being grown for paper pulp of fast stands suitable for milling to 2×4 boards.
The trees grew poorly then died. The rubber plantation was an expensive failure. Even back then. there were people who knew that jungle trees of the same species don’t do well in close proximity to each other. They naturally sort themselves out into a mixed growth of trees and other plants that are mutually beneficial because they don’t compete directly with other plants of the same species. A more spread out planting, interspersed with other plants producing commercially exploitable fibers, wood, or fruits, could have been a success. Imagine Ford brand bananas, grown amongst the trees producing rubber for Ford Tires. But of course people who knew these things were routinely ignored, banana trees were planted in large monoculture stands, which caused the spread of damaging fungi that nearly made the Gros Michel banana extinct.
There are different rules regarding taxes depending on whether you’re planting trees as a crop VS planting them simply to forest some land. In Washington State, if you allow your tree crop to grow long enough the State may decide it’s “old growth” and those trees you were growing to mill some massive timbers from might be impossible to cut down.
Justin Trudeau promised to plant 2 billion trees across Canada.
Which is a major part of the Taiga.
More informed foresters than Jussie naturally asked –
“where are you gonna put them?”
If the Taiga thaws out due to a slightly warmer climate- the trees will plant themselves.
I am in favor of the idea of planting trees, lots of them but primarily to be logged for lumber. We can plant trees most suited for lumber in areas that would be easy to log and replant. It is a win win solution and if the CAGW activists want to brag about how much CO2 the trees are removing I’m okay with that.
bingo!
There are currently about 514 million acres of US land devoted to lumber production as you suggest. How much should we add and why?
Until lumber is in abundance and cheap or until CAGW whiners go away.
Deciduous versus coniferous…
Pine is usually panted due to it being sufficiently grown for harvesting in 20 years.
Plusses and minuses for each.
In my long but geographically limited experience, trees can plant themselves without much of the envisioned human help.
On my Uplands Wisconsin dairy farm forest hardwood pasture margins (mostly various oaks, hard maples, and hickories), we have had to mow them down inside miles of pasture fence lines for over 40 years—6 foot diameter Bush Hog three point hitched behind the 4wd 27 hp compact haying tractor. Now on its third set of ~1 inch thick sharp swinging blades, with one 1/8 inch steel deck crack electric arc welding repair near its PTO gearbox in my shop (yah, like all farmers I can weld well enough).
At my daughter’s mountain home in Evergreen, Colorado, different softwood tree species (mostly firs) would similarly take over their smallish couple acre yard if not also mowed every couple of years. Don’t need to mow the grass—the elk herd coming down the creek from nearby 16000 acre Elk Meadow State Park does that regularly. But they leave the firs to grow unless occasionally weed whacked (using steel, not nylon ‘strings’).
“In my long but geographically limited experience, trees can plant themselves without much of the envisioned human help.”
Right. The trees come in waves. First come early succession species- which tend to grow fast and die young. Then come mid succession species- then come long lived species. Which species depend on the location. One of the first persons to appreciate “forest succession” was Henry David Thoreau- who I happened to visit by going into my time machine back to his cabin on Walden Pond. 🙂
I seem to remember the joke about the “tree-huggers”…
“Well, if all else fails…we can always eat the damned trees..!”
Plant a trillion trees. Dig up the solar panels to make way for them.
I’ll vote for that!
One has to consider the potential harm the SV toxins have on the soil and if that matters.
Living in the forested CO Front Range , my question is : Where ?
There are massive burn scars in the region , and they damn well should have been replanted literally decades ago in any case .
But just spouting ” plant a trillion trees ” raises the question : Where ? Reduce agricultural land which is record GREEN anyway ?
The whole notion is based on the idea that 4 molecules of CO2 per 10k of air is somehow too much .
I would rather have hundreds of square miles of trees than waste that land on SV or WTG farms.
I get you point, but the current approach of “saving the planet” by destroying it goes against my conservationist instincts.
Just like everything else ideological, it’s a wasted effort. Trees planted where they don’t grow naturally will not propagate without artificial assistance. It’s like subsidizing manufacture of products people don’t want; the instant the subsidies stop, consumption will return to normal levels. EVs provide a good example.
Tree planting for political purposes often fails. Some regions are successful like the America Southeast where the manage the forests on an industrial scale. They have to do it right or they’ll lose money. When there’s no financial risk of failure, it’s often done wrong.
And in the meantime we are chopping down deciduous forests in North America to burn them in East Yorkshire to boil water to make steam to drive electrical turbines. We are not serious people.
Absolutely 100% f****** false. They DON’T chop down forests for chips for the UK. While managing forests to produce high value timber, the trees that aren’t that good get used for lower value purposes like pulp, firewood and yes, chips. So if those chips get shipped to the UK, so f****** what? Some of you keep repeating this nonsense- making you as dense as the climatistas here. Now, I appreciate the fact that the UK has coal under some power plants and they SHOULD be using that and any other ff they can find in their region- but that doesn’t mean they’re chopping entire forests for this purpose. Grow up and pay attention. 🙂
Sorry Joe, I normally bow to your expertise. But I did a quick Co-pilot search and got the following:
Drax, a major UK power generator, sources wood pellets for its biomass plants from the U.S. Southeast, primarily from fully grown hardwood forests in states like North Carolina, Virginia, and parts of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana . These trees are harvested by hired contract loggers, often through clear-cutting, which removes entire forest areas rather than selectively taking smaller trees
.
What is your take on this?
Thanks!
Don’t believe everything you read. Try paying attention to foresters who have a lot of experience. I could do the research to prove you wrong but I have more fun things to do. I won’t do your homework for you.
Except to say- SOME of the wood may come from clearcut forests- but most of the wood will go to sawmills, pulp plants and firewood which is worth VASTLY more. Actually, most of the wood comes from managed softwood forests- that are managed industrially. The southeast is often called the wood basket of the planet. If SOME of the wood from those hardwood forests go to chips doesn’t mean “the forests were clearcut for chips”. Besides, don’t use Co-pilot, a product of Microsoft, noted for lefty propaganda, at least until it decided it needed more data centers so it no longer is pushing the climate BS. The way to really find out is to talk to foresters who work in the American southeast and the companies they work for. I never worked there so what I know about this is just occasionally reading about it. Reading what the companies that produce the chips have to say. Aren’t they more likely to know that Co-pilot?
My homework is what got me into this mess!
No Co-pilot for me!
Thanks for the response.
OK, I decided to do your homework because we’ve all had this discussion many times and I usually get dozens of down votes. So I asked ChatGPT the following.
The following is a lengthy reply that should settle this argument (here anyway).
——————-
Joe, I think your basic understanding is substantially correct, with one important qualification: Drax does use some hardwood, but the evidence does not support the sweeping claim that its American pellets are all, or even mostly, made from clearcut hardwood forests. The U.S. supply is heavily tied to the Southern forest-products economy, especially southern pine.
Drax’s latest reporting says that in 2025 about 60% of all the fibre it sourced worldwide came from the U.S. At its U.S. operations, the major categories were roughly 45% sawmill/wood-industry residues, 31% low-grade roundwood, and 19% thinnings, with smaller amounts of tops/branches and other material. At Drax Power Station itself, about 5.8 million tonnes of fibre came from the U.S. in 2025.
The species question is especially interesting. A Drax Sustainable Biomass Program supply-base audit describes the feedstock for its Southern operations as southern yellow pine with a minority component of mixed southern hardwoods. That is much closer to what you suspected than to the image of hardwood forests being routinely clearcut solely to feed Drax.
There is some independent evidence pointing in the same direction. A study of Drax’s Louisiana and Mississippi supply areas found that pine plantations occupied roughly 47% of the relevant landscape and reported industry information indicating that the mills primarily utilized thinnings rather than material from final harvests. An investigation commissioned by environmental organizations, interestingly, also reported that interviewees consistently described pine plantations as Drax’s main feedstock source, although respondents said hardwood could constitute roughly 5–20% of deliveries in some places.
There’s another distinction that I think gets badly muddled in this debate:
“Whole tree” ≠ “sawtimber tree” ≠ “clearcut hardwood forest.”
A truckload of roundwood entering a pellet mill can look terrible in a photograph. But as you know from forestry, a whole stem can be pulpwood, thinning material, crooked or defective trees, suppressed trees, or other low-grade material. The fact that pellets contain whole-tree roundwood does not establish that high-quality forests were harvested specifically for pellets.
Drax reported that in its U.S. South supply in 2024, 56.3% came from thinnings and low-grade roundwood and 39.3% from sawmill residues. Its Arkansas satellite plants provide an especially clear example: they were located next to sawmills specifically to use sawdust and other mill by-products.
There is, however, a legitimate point buried inside the criticism. Pellet mills do consume substantial quantities of actual roundwood, not merely sawdust and logging slash. A 2024 U.S. Forest Service-associated peer-reviewed study specifically examined the effect of the Southern pellet industry on both pine and hardwood pulpwood markets. Interestingly, it found that the expanding pellet industry had minimal impacts on pulpwood feedstock markets in the areas containing pellet mills. So I wouldn’t defend Drax by saying “they just burn waste.” That’s too simplistic and gives critics an easy target.
I would describe the situation this way:
There’s also a forestry-economic issue here that I suspect you’ll find more interesting than the biomass politics. A pellet market can provide a market for low-value material from pine thinnings, which can help make an intermediate silvicultural treatment economically feasible. One peer-reviewed study actually modeled Drax demand specifically in the context of thinning Southern pine plantations. That’s quite different from the mental picture of loggers mowing down mature hardwood stands to throw valuable logs into a furnace.
Drax now has a useful interactive Biomass Tracker showing source regions, fibre types, transportation and certification information.
Drax Biomass Tracker
There must be a limit to the length of a message here and it couldn’t take more words. The following is the rest of the message from ChatGPT.
——————
One caution: most of the detailed sourcing numbers ultimately originate with Drax or its certification/audit system, so I wouldn’t treat company claims as the final word. The strongest case would compare Drax/SBP records against Forest Service FIA data, mill procurement studies, and independent investigations.
And that might actually make a good forestry project for us. I could dig into the Drax pellet mills in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama individually and try to determine, as closely as the available records allow, what percentage is pine versus hardwood, what percentage is thinning versus final harvest, and whether there is credible evidence of natural hardwood stands being clearcut specifically for pellet production. That would get us beyond the dueling slogans and into actual forestry.
Thanks for the info. What I get from this is Co-pilot is wrong!
There is a 5,000 character limit for a comment. In upper right hand corner, there is character counter. Spaces and punctuation count as characters. This comment used 4816 characters.
Wow, I never noticed that! Now I see it. I wonder what other amazing things are in front of me that I don’t see. 🙂
Another feature of this site is the ability to make corrections or to add additional info to a comment after it is posted. After you post comment, move the mouse pointer to lower right hand corner of the box and there will appear a small gear wheel. Placing the pointer on wheel cause the message “Manage Comment” to appear. Clicking on it causes the message “Edit” to appear. Clicking on it results in you comment being displayed in light grey text. After making corrections, you click on “Save” and the corrected comment then appears in dark text. You have a five minute window for making corrections after posting a comment.
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I live in BC where forestry and mining the main industries. In the 1990’s due to the lack of very cold winters, the mountain pine beetle wiped out most of the interior lodgepole forest.
Episodes of infestation happen and always have. Nature doesn’t care- but industries do.
I recall that Drax receives substantial subsides and possibly carbon credits from the UK government for their wood pellet operation.
Wood pellets have a very large carbon foot print. Heavy machinery with big Diesel engines are used in forest operations that generate wood waste. The wood waste from a variety sources are taken to pellet plant. Some of the pellets are for production of energy in the manufacturing process. The pellets are taken to port for export by trucks with big Diesel engines. A cargo ship with big marine engines transports the pellets to the UK. The pellets are off loaded to trucks with big Diesel engines which take the pellets to the power plant.
Sure, there are credits and maybe there shouldn’t be but I don’t care to debate that issue. As for wood pellets having a large carbon footprint- that’s false- pushed by enviros who hate forestry. It would take a very long message to explain why I’m right and I’m too busy. But even if it did, so what? Most people here other than the climatistas don’t worry about carbon footprints. My main concern is high quality forestry and a chip industry makes that possible. Without a market for the lowest quality wood- it makes it difficult to dispose of those trees, in order to put the growth on potentially high value trees.
My carbon foot print is one kilogram of exhaled CO2 everyday. Most all of this CO2 is absorbed by the oceans and vast forests of BC.
Not sure if you’ll get the following in your email so I’m responding here so you’ll see this- to read what I’ve gotten from ChatGPT.
The bumper-stickers practically wrote themselves:
— Try-Tree-Trillion(s), a Trumpian-Triumph
— Replant Arbor Day; Incinerate Earth Day
— Planet re-Plant-It, for the Planet
In [our] paperback copy of Small is Beautiful, by E. F. Schumacher, its Foreword included an interview in which the Author which answers the LeninesQuestion ‘What Then Shall Be Done?’ with the simple advice: ‘If I were you, I’d plant a tree’
In EFS’ classic essay ‘Buddhist Economics’, he quotes Mahatma Ghandi as urging that every Citizen should plant, in each new year, a Seedling, and then nourish it into a Healthy New Tree.
Noted this Humble Arithmetic expression-of-interest:
10-Billions-of-Population X 100-yrs (Human Life-Span) => One-Trillion-New-Trees a-growing
Having just now covered, over these last four (4) days, some 2,000-miles,
… up from San-Antone,
… to Amarillo-by-Morning,
… onward to Limone-Colorado (think NCAR-over-Boulder),
… past the Devil-Tower-of-Mephistopheles Wyoming, and
… from Billings-on-the-Yellowstone
… to Lethbridge, on the [we]-be-Oldman-River, Alberta
[we] can assure you that …
There is not one single mile of that endless North-American-Prairie-Land that would not be improved by healthy re-foresting for {windbreaks, shady-shelter, treehouses, nuts-&-fruits}
There was not one single solar-panel that could not profitably be replaced by a healthy young tree!
Thanking you for your serious attention to this ever-more-pressing matter, [we] remain
most gratefully yours
(signed) IIT-Madras’ Prof Dr T. Pradip, aka Doktor Faustus, as channeled thru one Mephistopheles-RLW-efarmosmeni khimia εφαρμοσμένος,
[they] are never qAnon, rather manifestly [our]selves & assiduously AI-Free, forevermore
Much of the North American prairie, now much of it as corn fields, or if still prairie once had a lot more trees- before the Native Americans showed up and set fires. The trees were scattered all over the prairie- much like trees in the African savanna.
Oh dear oh dear. When a tree falls and is eaten by mushrooms or is burnt, it yields its CO2 to atmosphere. So a forest is carbon (dioxide) neutral . Oh dear
Seventy years ago when I was seven years old, for my birthday I planted a S. Sempervirens that now approaches 200 feet tall, 36” ABH and sequesters about 20 tons of carbon. This tree is from the same clone that once beautified the San Jose campus of California State.
Late in my sixth decade of existence, I have noted that trees actually grow FAST! 😉
Neither natural climate variability nor natural approaches to mitigation of potential damage from CO2 are consistent with the anti-human / anti-economic progress that are the true goals of the Net Zero crowd. China and their fellow travelers are happy to glom onto an effort that will propel them to dominance in manufacturing and in international political power.
The really big sink for CO2 is the oceans. Plants ranging from alga to sea grasses and weeds fix large amounts CO2. Since the pH of the ocean is 8.1 most of the CO2 is converted bicarbonate and carbonate anions. These are used by mollusks to form their shells. Corals use these anions to form their rigid structures.
The cocolithophores and the foraminifera construct their outer envelopes of calcium carbonate from the bicarbonate and carbonate anions. When these organism die they sink to the ocean floor. After many million of years deposits of fine-grained limestone is formed. The surface limestone formations were once under water. The aforementioned microorganisms are a source of calcium for many animals in the oceans.
The oceans are Mother Nature’s main carbon capture and storage system. This system is so efficient that a cubic meter of surface air contains only a mere 0.84 grams of carbon dioxide.