100,000 Mangrove Trees Planted In One Day?

Often a question title has a “no” response that follows in the article body. In this case, it is “yes.” Tom Chi recently gave an impressive TED Talk about replanting mangrove trees with drones. He says four people using drones and mangrove seeds can plant over 100,000 mangrove trees in one day. About 90% of the seeds planted reach germination and about 85% become established plants.

Unless I missed it, the presentation doesn’t go into why mangrove forests are so important for climate change. They are one of the best ways to pull carbon out of the atmosphere. 

Many mangrove ecosystems were destroyed by business people for the purpose of commercial shrimp farming. A while back, I wrote an article about how farmed shrimp are one of the worst foods for climate change. Potentially, hundreds of billions of farmed shrimp die every year on shrimp farms and are never consumed by humans. Destroying mangrove forests for shrimp farming was not a very smart or just action to take. Restoring mangrove forests is a reasonable and just action to take to support wild ecosystems and remove carbon generated by humans from the atmosphere.

Mr. Chi also makes some interesting points about potentially using underwater drones to replant coral reefs and sea grass beds. Sea grass beds, as well as mangrove foods, are also good for removing carbon from the atmosphere.

One of his main points is that the Jobs vs. the Environment framing may be considered a false framing. He says another way to perceive the situation is that human economic activity is a subset of the environment. If his premise that economic activity comes from raw materials that are mined or grown is true, then, yes, economic activity could be seen as a subset of the environment and, in that sense, the environment is primary and encompassing. The human species is only one species on this planet which has millions of species. Further, most of the species have not been scientifically catalogued. So, we humans actually don’t have a full accounting of all biological organisms and how they interact with their habitats.

There is also mention of regenerative agriculture which may have benefits. There is one issue with this practice: to some it means improving agriculture to offset carbon emissions from cattle because there are billions of them now and they generate far too much carbon. Some people think the solution is regenerative agriculture as if somehow keeping cattle is necessary and legitimate. However, another solution would be to simply phase out cattle altogether because they are not necessary for human nutrition or survival. The simplest and most effective solution is to gradually eliminate cattle, not rejigger large-scale cattle-based agriculture.

There’s a related bit of illogic with people who buy hybrid vehicles thinking they are good for the environment, but they are in no way good for the environment. They use a little fossil fuel so they are less terrible for the environment. A little less terrible is not at all good. There is nothing good about hybrids, environmentally speaking. Similarly, making some adjustments to large-scale animal agriculture to make it a bit less devastating is not a solution. The solution is to eliminate cattle gradually.

Finally, but somewhat out of order to his presentation, Mr. Chi made a point about how many people have positive or very positive views about nature. Somehow, they don’t understand that many human economic activities regularly destroy nature and they themselves support and/or participate in these activities. So, the same people who say they love coastal areas and beaches may be driving vehicles that use fossil fuels, not understanding that fossil fuel combustion is driving climate change which in turn damages and destroys biological systems at coastal areas. Oil spills from tanker ships and ocean drilling also fouls coastal areas and kills marine life. To put it more simply, there are people who say they like or love nature and at the same time are harming and/or destroying it.