Trees made it into the State of the Union: Now what?
By Cindy Montañez, TreePeople CEO
Many heroes were praised in President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address — from the 100-year-old Tuskegee Airman who served in three wars to the soldier who was reunited with his family after a seven-month deployment.
For all the headlines this speech will generate, for all the analysis that will keep political pundits busy for days, we cannot let the other heroes the President mentioned get buried in the noise: trees. In his speech, in just one sentence, the President signed the United States on to a global initiative underway to plant a trillion trees by 2030. That’s a big deal.
We know that trees are a critical solution to the health and longevity of our planet. We know that they contribute to cooler cities, cleaner water and vibrant communities. They’re a key component not only to addressing the urgency of a changing climate, but also to improving public health in communities with little to no tree canopy and shade in parks, schools and public spaces.
Planting and caring for trees is not just an environmental issue, it’s a social justice, public health, and infrastructure one, too. And more and more, governments big and small across the world are realizing what we have been saying for decades. Business leaders, too, have stepped up. Just recently, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff announced that more than 300 companies had signed on to the same Trillion Tree Campaign that President Trump referenced in his address.
But here’s the trick, one that we as an environmental grassroots movement in Los Angeles — a city with one of the poorest air qualities in America — have learned in our nearly 50 years planting and caring for more than 3 million trees: none of this will be successful without people. Proper funding is important, that’s why we need the business community onboard; supportive policies and political will clears the way, that’s why we need governments to support us. However, in the end, this proposal — or any of these ambitious ideas that aim to plant millions, billions or trillions of trees — can succeed without the active participation and engagement of people.
As we say at TreePeople, trees need people and people need trees. That means that devoting resources to planting trillions of trees is not enough. We need a grassroots movement, similar to those sprouting in communities around the world, to get the job done. We need to educate young and old on the importance of planting the right tree in the right place at the right time, because planting just any tree just anywhere can actually do more damage than good. And we need to care for those trees once they’re in the ground, because as the Turkish government recently learned when they lost 11 million trees, “plant it and forget it” just doesn’t work.
Admittedly, this isn’t a novel idea. People have been connecting with trees for thousands of years. Just ask anyone what their favorite memory of a tree is, and chances are they’ll regale you with stories of the tree that brought countless hours of joy as a child; the one that provided a reference point when they were lost; the one under which they fell in love. But now we need more than just stories. We all need to do our part and act. Now is the time.
The beauty is, it’s easy. Most of us care about our environment. We all want to leave this planet healthier for our children and grandchildren. But the reality is that for a lot of us, some of the solutions proposed are either overwhelming or just economically not feasible. Not everyone can afford an electric car. Not everyone can go carbon neutral. But I bet everyone can plant or care for a tree.
Cindy Montañez is Chief Executive Officer of Los Angeles-based TreePeople, an environmental nonprofit organization whose mission is to inspire, engage and support people to take personal responsibility for the urban environment.
