Brandon Yen

Ms. Ja

Western Culture

10/28/19

Questions:

1. How do we stop deforestation?

2. Are there immediate consequences?

3. What is all this wood being used for?

Comments:

1. It is hard to imagine life without trees, especially since most of the effects that trees

provide have not been fully deprecated.

2. There are a lot of charities saying that they plant trees for every dollar that you donate,

but I wonder how that actually works.

3. At some point, we might not be able to save the trees and might have to move to another

planet.

Reflection:

As I was scrolling through my Youtube feed a few days ago, I saw a video about planting

20 million trees. I knew it wasn’t real but I wanted to see how they were doing it, and it was

from a youtuber who was known for extraordinary content. I was surprised to learn that they’ve

partnered with a lot of other people and teamtrees.org to try and plant 20 million trees by 2020,

or rather, raise 20 million dollars to plant 20 million trees. It came as a joke for his 20 million

subscriber milestone, but nonetheless he followed through with it.

 Brandon Yen

Ms. Ja

Western Culture

10/28/19

I began to think about how this would affect the environment. Would this be enough? I

had heard that hectares of tress were being destroyed every day, but 20 million trees was

certainly a lot. This article gave me a bigger perspective of how trees affect us, such as UV

radiation absorption, energy efficiency, heat, and more.

There were many other videos about this as well, ranging from an autonomous drone to

plant trees to a tree cannon. I think that planting 20 million trees is a huge step towards saving

the environment, and while it won’t end climate change and deforestation entirely it can help bit

by bit. And considering the amount of things that are said online that are just sad to see, this

really restores some of my faith in humanity, honestly.

Another thing I thought about was how to stop deforestation. Deforestation is usually for

lumber or to clear the land for building things. The problem of lumber is more easily combatted;

using alternatives such as concrete would partially solve that, but deforestation for building

things is the biggest problem, in my opinion. This might be solved by dedicating some land to

building new things, or incorporating trees into the buildings that are being built. Having them

around the building, or in something like an atrium, are possible ideas. Thus, trees and buildings

could both be there at the same time.