Team Trees


Team Trees, also known as TeamTrees or #teamtrees, is a collaborative fundraiser that managed to raise 20 million U.S. dollars before 2020 to plant 20 million trees. The initiative was started by American YouTubers MrBeast and Mark Rober, and was mostly supported by YouTubers. All donations go to the Arbor Day Foundation, a tree-planting organization that pledges to plant one tree for every U.S. dollar donated. The Arbor Day Foundation plans to begin planting in January 2020 and end "no later than December 2022". It is estimated that 20 million trees would take up of land, absorb around 1.6 million tons of carbon and remove 116 thousand tons of chemical air pollution from the atmosphere.
By December 26, 2019, the project had raised over $20.7 million, surpassing the fundraiser's goal to plant 20 million trees. As of June 2020, the project has raised over $22 million.

Background

The idea started on May 24, 2019, when a fan suggested on Reddit that MrBeast should plant 20 million trees to celebrate reaching 20 million subscribers on YouTube. The idea spread across YouTube, Reddit, and Twitter, mostly in the form of memes. The idea may have been related to the 2019 Amazon rainforest wildfires. American YouTuber, engineer, and inventor Mark Rober partnered directly with Donaldson to launch the fundraiser. On October 25, 2019, Donaldson uploaded a YouTube video explaining his plan, which claimed the top spot on YouTube's trending page, and numerous YouTubers have joined the movement.
Notable YouTubers who have donated include PewDiePie, Rhett & Link, Marshmello, iJustine, Marques Brownlee, The Slow Mo Guys, Ninja, Simone Giertz, Jacksepticeye, Smarter Every Day, Simply Nailogical, The King of Random, Dude Perfect, The Try Guys, Alan Becker, Alan Walker, TheOdd1sOut Linus Tech Tips, Jeffree Star and Jaiden Animations. Entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk, Tobias Lütke, Marc Benioff, Susan Wojcicki, Jack Dorsey, and Jean-Michel Lemieux have also donated and promoted the campaign.
The trees will be planted "in a variety of forests on public and private lands in areas of great need" starting in January 2020. The goal is to have them planted "no later than December 2022".

Responses

Many YouTubers created content to capitalize on the growing trend of Team Trees; despite the Arbor Day Foundation reaching out to only a few hundred creators, Team Trees is now featured in over 8,000 videos from over 400 global creators. Across Instagram and Twitter over 556,000 posts have garnered more than 4.6 billion views. Creators were able to uniquely inspire their audience to become donors and supporters of Team Trees through their relationships with their fans.
In addition to social media influencers, large corporations made large donations including Verizon, EA, Salesforce, Shopify and Tesla.
Discovery Channel made a documentary called #TeamTrees about the campaign which aired on December 3, 2019, coupled with a donation of USD $100,200 the next day.

Criticism

Team Trees has also received substantial criticism from some, primarily regarding its effectiveness and whether or not the science behind the recapture of atmospheric carbon with trees is adequate. YouTuber Simon Clark criticized it based on his fear of the self-licensing effect, which states that one's positive moral action makes them tend to worry less about future negative moral actions. As applied to Team Trees, Clark mentioned that someone who donates to the fundraiser may feel justified to perform other actions that might completely offset the carbon reduction obtained by planting the trees. As an example, he mentions how the carbon reductions from an entire lifetime of 20 trees could also be achieved by going vegan for six years, or could be completely negated by taking only four round-trip flights from western Europe to the western coast of the United States. Clark also attempted to put into perspective just how little of an effect Team Trees would have relative to the amount of carbon emitted annually. With the estimation of 20 million trees removing one million tons of carbon from the atmosphere over a century, Clark indicated, this is only a thousandth of the billion tons of carbon that we release every single year.
Eike Lüdeling, the department head of horticultural sciences at the University of Bonn, stated, "It turns out that many of these seedlings, if you don't do this well or if people do it who don’t really care about those trees, then they all just die quickly. Sometimes it’s probably a better idea to plant fewer trees and really take care of them." Danny Cohn, the director of public relations for the Arbor Day Foundation, addressed these concerns in saying that "the partners who work with the organization are all required to have plans to help their trees thrive."
Adam Rogers, writing in Wired, described more issues with attempting to combat climate change by planting trees. Much of the article is a response to an article published in Science regarding the potential for drawing carbon out of the atmosphere via a colossal restoration of forested land. Rogers indicated that technical comments left on the article after its publication heavily criticized its logic, which included substantially underestimating the amount of carbon absorbed by the ocean and overestimating the amount of carbon absorbed by trees. Rogers quotes Carla Staver, an ecologist at Yale University who wrote, "We're not talking about small errors here. We're talking about a huge difference in the total amount of carbon you could sequester." Staver emphasizes that while planting trees may be a popular and partially helpful solution, it's far from a truly sufficient solution and it's more important to focus on addressing the ways in which we emit carbon.

Top donations

Progress

On December 19, 2019, Team Trees raised 20 million dollars, reaching their funding goal.
DateTimeDollars raised
October 25, 201923:481,346,673
October 26, 201922:043,855,582
October 27, 201922:345,114,086
October 28, 201923:165,869,928
October 29, 201922:246,421,543
October 30, 201923:2610,017,094
October 31, 201923:1011,139,410
November 1, 201917:5411,418,408
November 2, 201920:0912,127,398
November 3, 201921:3012,457,975
November 4, 201923:4012,759,177
November 5, 201923:0212,990,038
November 6, 201917:3513,086,723
November 7, 201922:3214,270,669
November 8, 201913:2914,318,587
November 9, 201917:0014,493,575
November 10, 201910:5114,571,404
November 11, 201922:3314,792,203
November 12, 201921:3415,067,647
November 13, 20195:5815,117,537
November 14, 201915:5015,256,989
November 15, 201917:4815,389,379
November 16, 201922:2615,470,709
November 17, 201917:5315,516,700
November 18, 201922:0515,614,674
November 19, 201920:2215,664,293
November 20, 201921:4615,838,510
November 21, 201919:2715,887,461
November 22, 201919:5616,012,188
November 23, 20199:3916,027,059
November 24, 201914:5916,076,671
November 25, 201919:5116,151,263
November 26, 201918:1916,211,416
November 27, 201923:0316,269,647
November 28, 201923:0316,305,295
November 29, 201922:0416,362,962
November 30, 201922:0416,419,021
December 1, 201915:1516,442,831
December 2, 201923:0416,522,729
December 3, 201922:0317,094,531
December 4, 201922:0617,293,791
December 5, 201922:0317,358,666
December 6, 201923:0317,438,145
December 7, 201922:0417,478,462
December 8, 201923:0817,534,195
December 9, 201923:0617,646,302
December 10, 201923:0617,758,569
December 11, 201923:0317,788,640
December 12, 201923:0318,075,642
December 13, 201921:0318,393,320
December 14, 201923:0418,604,333
December 15, 201923:0418,825,541
December 16, 201923:0618,955,440
December 17, 201923:0419,409,497
December 18, 201921:0519,721,790
December 19, 201922:5520,151,369
December 20, 20198:0720,217,980
December 21, 201923:0420,358,164
December 22, 201923:0720,398,356
December 23, 201922:0420,477,705
December 24, 201922:0420,587,761
December 25, 201910:0320,608,816
December 26, 201922:0520,737,037