Object permanence is a hard concept to grasp- most people usually get it down as toddlers- but some people are late bloomers. Planting trees- creates habitat for wildlife, can help prevent erosion, lower local temperatures and provide shade, renew timber resources, and helps scrub CO2.
Planting trees does not magically cause waste products to disappear. It does not solve issues like industrial pollution. Trees scrub CO2 but not really NOX or other harmful gasses we produce. If not done with thought and expertise, planting masses of trees can cause problems with soil (plants take nutrients from soil FIY,) or even change local- global weather patterns causing droughts or floods or storms etc. it can also change local ecosystems that have adapted to lack of tree cover- animals and plants- large numbers of trees cast large shadows FIY.
The “easy” solution to making soil fertile that isn’t, and keeping it fertile- is industrial fertilizer. Which... is a major source of water pollution, can cause algae blooms, kill marine life, have other impacts, and over time the nitrates can build up in soil and have the opposite effect of making them fertile.
Plastic straw bans and the like are perhaps not the wisest things we could do to help the environment- targeting industrial pollution and limiting waste and excess consumption would go a long way. But... this comparison is off base since the two examples are trying to accomplish very different things.
350 million trees isn't a lot on a grand scale, you'd have to plant 20 million trees a day for the rest of time to offset the carbon emissions of just the United States assuming it doesn't change for the rest of time, a one and done of 350 million trees is nothing but, at its best, a publicity stunt to raise awareness of the issue and I really doubt they framed it that way.
Very true- and the effects aren’t instant- it can take hundreds of years for a tree to gather meaningful amounts of carbon. For perspective- the US as a nation plants about 1.6 billion trees a year. Almost half are estimated to be planted by companies that work with wood products. China has planted over 60 billion trees just in their efforts to stop desertification of their northern regions.
I don’t want to take away from the good that many people are doing, but my main sticking points are that people are trying to make planting trees a contest and the de facto standard of helping the environment- and people seem to not be very well informed on both the facts of the matter or the realities of planting trees and what to expect.
And the fact is- of those 60 BILLION trees China planted- its estimated about 10 billion are still alive. What’s more- other efforts to impact climate change and desertification in China using grasses has shown far more measurable gain than their tree planting- at less cost.
One good example of the issue being more complex than just planting trees is the heightened average temperatures not killing off wood beetles in the winter which has killed more than half of the trees on some hills and at a minimum of around a 1/4th of the tree coverage being gone.
You can't just plant more of the same trees, the beetles will just kill those too. You can't just add a new species of tree to the ecosystem without causing cascading changes to the whole area and good luck getting it to stick.
That is exactly the type critical thought and attention I wish more people would show. We want things to be simple- they are not simple when we discuss things like global interrelated systems of engineering the ecosystem of a planet. And- to your point- trees brought in- especially when things are done with haste to “break records” and such/ can even carry bag or disease and bring those to a formerly healthy system. Again- not to say planting trees is “bad” or shouldn’t be done/recognizes when it is- just that “easy” and “measurable” and “makes people feel like good things are happening” shouldn’t substitute for actual, effective, and with minimal risk/negative repercussion.
Not thinking, not taking time to measure and study effects of our actions, and holding up some new fad- are kinda how we got here. While not likely to be as extreme- we’ve seen islands and ecosystems decimated by invasive species- some brought in as part of an effort to help “holistically” balance or change the local ecosystem. Humans aren’t as smart as we think we are. We theoretically can do anything given time and resources- but we just aren’t as smart a species- “masters of all” as we tend to like to think. Not yet. They thought they were so smart at the turn of the industrial revolution too. What could possibly go wrong?
You can't just plant more of the same trees, the beetles will just kill those too. You can't just add a new species of tree to the ecosystem without causing cascading changes to the whole area and good luck getting it to stick.