Team Trees is an initiative by YouTuber MrBeast. The goal: plant 20 million trees around the world by January 1, 2020. So far, as of this writing, more than 10 million trees have been pledged at $1 each. Elon Musk donated funds to plant 1 million trees. YouTube is matching the next million-dollar donation to Team Trees, and even Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey made a donation.
Ok, sounds legit, will donate 1M trees
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 29, 2019
Shopify’s CEO decided to take the #1 spot from Elon Musk (now “Treelon”) a day or so later by pledging 1 million and 1 dollars for the same number of trees.
Good idea. OK Boomers, on behalf of 1,000,000 Shopify merchants and my own defunct snowboarding store, I‘ll donate 1,000,001 trees. @MrBeastYT @elonmusk
— Tobi Lutke 🌳🌲🛒🕹 (@tobi) October 30, 2019
Team Trees
TeamTrees started in May of 2019 when the lovely folks of the internet challenged MrBeast. The challenge: plant 20 million trees to commemorate hitting 20 million YouTube subscribers. Fans had really great ideas, including uniting other YouTubers and influencers to make it happen. Then Elon joined in.
We’ve created a new superhero pic.twitter.com/UYWBxqeOKo
— MrBeast (@MrBeastYT) October 30, 2019
Team Trees is working with the Arbor Day Foundation, because it is the longest-running NGO working on this matter, with 47 years of experience. All donations go to the Arbor Day Foundation and funds will go toward tree planting. One dollar per tree. Imagine if every one of Elon’s followers donated just $1 — Team Trees would exceed its goal!
“Restoring lands through tree planting is the Arbor Day Foundation’s area of expertise and something they’ve been doing for nearly five decades. There’s no silver bullet for fixing climate change, just silver buckshot, so we should actively pursue many different approaches including both preservation and restoration.” —Team Trees FAQ Page.
Trees will be planted in a variety of forests on both public and private lands in areas of great need, including on every continent except Antarctica. Working with professional forestry partners around the globe, the Arbor Day Foundation will plant the trees starting in January 2020, with hopes to be complete the project by December 2022. Yes, this will be a two-year tree-planting mission.
Treelon Musk — King Of The Trees For Almost 1 Day
With the major pledge of 1 million trees, Elon Musk (lovingly called “Treelon” Musk by MrBeast) was king of the trees … until Shopify’s CEO one-upped him.
Speaking of Trees, Elon’s name actually means “oak tree” in Hebrew. Interestingly, “Ukraine” is up quite high. I am not sure if that’s just someone’s username or the actual government of Ukraine.
Another fun one: The Odd1sOut pulled an “angel” number on us: 33,333. Angel numbers are repeating numbers like 111, 444, etc. Someone named “Fruitopia” donated 10,500 trees and made me want some Strawberry Passion Awareness (my fave) just for old time’s sake.
YouTube is matching the next million dollars donated to TeamTrees thru the Youtube donate button!!!!! WHAT IS GOING ON???? TEAMTREES IS ON FIRE!!! https://t.co/x1O2IJ3YbL
— MrBeast (@MrBeastYT) October 30, 2019
I think this is a beautiful project, one I will contribute to as well, and this shows just how much we all matter. Every voice, every tweet, every person counts. Imagine if 20 million people donated only $1 each to plant the trees. Imagine if 365 million people donated $1 each to plant a tree. That would be one million trees planted per day!
Now, if only Jeff Bezos would pitch in and dethrone Tobi Lutke. We all love a little rivalry, and it would benefit the planet.
Elon, you stole @kimbal's Plant A Seed Day thunder.
Still the most iconic interview ever: "I'm so happy about the future of Tesla and I'm excited about Plant A Seed Day."https://t.co/CgvisehdMd
— Lisa G-Punkt (@LudaLisl) October 29, 2019
I do think that Lisa’s tweet (above) has a point, and it’s pretty funny. We can’t fault Elon for being late to the Plant A Seed Day event since Team Trees was started in May, but we can all agree that every day can be Plant A Seed Day. I wonder how many trees will be planted on next year’s Plant A Seed Day by the Arbor Day Foundation from this initiative.
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