A New Zealand-based campaign has planted more than 130,000 trees to help offset the impacts of President Donald Trump’s climate change policies, creating what it calls the “Trump Forest.”
The idea behind the project is to plant enough trees globally to “soak up the extra greenhouse gases Trump plans to put into our atmosphere” by rolling back the Clean Power Plan and pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, according to its website. To do this, organizers estimate they need to plant enough trees to cover approximately 37,000 square miles — an area the size of Kentucky.
The campaign asks volunteers to either plant a tree locally or donate money to a tree-planting effort in another country. So far, the effort has raised more than $18,000 from 500 backers and planted nearly 131,000 trees around the world.
The Trump Forest campaign was started by British climate scientist Dan Price, political scientist Jeff Willis, and Adrien Taylor, founder of the sustainable hat company Offcut.
“Only a small percentage of the world voted [Trump] in, but we all have to deal with the consequences of his climate ignorance,” Taylor told the BBC.
