If We Plant 1 Trillion Trees Can We Stop Climate Change?

• This video explains the important role that trees play in capturing carbon and halting climate change. 
• Students will learn about tree-planting activists, the importance of protecting existing forests, and the potential for using synthetic biology to help trees sequester even more carbon. 

Positives

• The video does a good job of explaining why we will need to reduce our carbon emissions while also protecting all the existing trees and replanting as many trees as possible. 
• There are great animations and images to help support the material.
  

Additional Prerequisites

• This video contains advertisements.
  

Differentiation

• Biology classes could discuss why RuBisCo has not evolved to be more efficient like other molecular enzymes. Students could debate whether scientists should try to manipulate RuBisCo so that it is more productive. 
• Science classes or environmental clubs could organize a tree-planting day for the community and use this interactive resource from the Nature Conservancy to see which neighborhoods would benefit most from having more trees. 
• Other resources on this topic include this MIT resource, this video about natural solutions to climate change, this table of solutions from Project Drawdown, this lesson about climate solutions, and this Vox video on how humans disrupted the natural carbon cycle.
  

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