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Comment by GravityLab | Hacker News Reader

Plant more trees! Don't underestimate the impact that planting even just one or two trees as an individual can have. It's also a lot of fun.

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Somehow people want to end everything even if they don't have a stake in the opposite. Where I live is a quite small nature park in a desert ; it rains here, it's green, it works. But when you say plant trees, they say it doesn't matter unless it's 1000s of km2. It's not. This is much smaller and it looks like a cartoon cloud above this place when it rains as everything around is completely dry. Not sure why people don't just try; they'll see it works, but he.

I am glad to hear that it rains and is green in that corner of the desert, my friend. That is a beautiful image indeed. I am really excited about the possibility of reforesting in deserts, although deserts are beautiful habitats in themselves so we should definitely keep deserts around too.

I think people just feel defeated as individuals because they read only doomer content on climate change and as a result they feel overwhelmed unless some larger entity takes on the fight on their behalf. They've come to underestimate the impact individuals can have in effecting great change. I'm optimistic that little by little things can improve and that people can enjoy having a fun time contributing to the fight in positive ways as individuals.

>They've come to underestimate the impact individuals can have in effecting great change.

The tiny thing the GP is talking about, a small park, is completely out of reach of individuals.

Small communities can have an impact. But the only thing individuals can do is to pick what initiatives they support and what they wont have any piece of.

So how is that state of mind not going to end the world?

Refusing to acknowledge it hasn't work any well...

But do you have any evidence of the contrary? I'm eager to listen to it.

The prime mover in any small community is an individual!

"Primer mover" isn't a concept that exists.

You can either help organize something or act alone. Those are completely different kinds of action. And acting alone won't achieve anything.

At the risk of sounding like a concern troll, I wish people were more thoughtful with tree planting campaigns. Rich ecosystems (peatlands, grasslands, savannas) have been damaged by attempts to introduce trees where they don't really belong. Surprisingly, this can cause a net decrease in carbon capture! And monoculture forests support relatively little biodiversity even though they look so green.

Sometimes planting more trees is the right answer, and we should absolutely do it. But often it feels like planting trees is a cheap way to score some green points without actually establishing healthy, sustainable ecosystems.

I read once about an idea of forcing every school in the US to have a small nature preserve - just some local trees and flowers and wild grasses. This would create habitats all across the nation which would serve to protect wild animals and give humans a chance, as they're growing, to develop a respect for nature.

Ever since then, I can't get the idea out of my head. It seems really nice. Excuse the pun, but this is one place where grassroots movements can have massively outsized effects.

That's a neat idea. It'd be cool if they also had a school garden as well, then everyone can learn to appreciate growing their own fruits and vegetables as well.

And I love your pun! :D

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