A lot of bad news

It’s easy to feel depressed about the climate crisis right now. Wherever you look, there’s more bad news. Whether it’s icecaps melting, species becoming extinct, wild fires or political apathy – it’s everywhere.

Obviously as an environmental charity we are realists – we know how bad things are, and we know that it’ll be an immense challenge to make things right (or even attempt to go in that direction). Some things at this stage are probably irreversible, as awful as it is to say it out loud. But there are positive things happening and there are ways we can get things back on track. You’ve probably heard of the recent push from scientists to plant a trillion trees – young trees suck up more carbon from the atmosphere, and over the course of a few decades, if we planted a trillion of them (which equates to an area roughly the size of the USA) we could theoretically suck up 750 billion metric tons of CO₂ (about 25 years worth of human pollution).

The view from Houghton Farm, our newest site in the Forest of Marston Vale

There is hope - trees!

We’ve planted over 2 million trees and you can already see the difference from high points around the Marston Vale. If every county/area in every country on earth did what we’ve done, then we’d be on our way to a better future already. Obviously it isn’t that simple – the countries with the space for a trillion trees are Russia, the USA, Canada, Australia, Brazil and China – not necessarily all known for their environmental credentials.

But in the UK, a recent YouGov survey showed that 37% of Brits would actually be willing to pay higher taxes to fix things and 46% had discussed the climate crisis within the past week. If that really is the case then 35 million people are actively thinking about the climate crisis every week, and that’s no mean feat.  It’s become a really hot topic – unfortunately because it’s got so bad. But as we’ve said before, the likes of Greta Thunberg and (love them or hate them) Extinction Rebellion constantly making headlines can only be a good thing for getting people to take notice of the issues.

What you can do

We are doing our Plant One On Us scheme again this winter, so if you live within the Forest boundary you can have a free tree (or trees) to plant on your own land.

Click here to find out more

Also, we’ll most likely be doing another public tree planting in early 2020 but we haven’t confirmed anything just yet, so if you’re looking for a tree planting event, The Woodland Trust are running the Big Climate Fightback on Sat 30^th November with tree planting events – there’s two in London and one in Tring – you can find out more info on their website (they require booking, so make sure you check them out in advance).

---

If you can't get involved with a tree planting, or don't live locally enough to take part in Plant One On Us - then do your bit by donating towards out woodland creation fund. Every £20 is another tree - that's another 2 people who can breathe, or another load of carbon sucked out of the air. Every single tree matters because trees make life better!