Mother Earth Day: Six ways trees combat climate change

Annually, April 22 is set aside by the United Nations (UN) to commemorate the International Mother Earth Day.

This year’s Mother Earth Day, themed Trees for Earth, sets the goal of planting about 7.8 billion trees in the next five years.

See how the United Nations says trees can help combat climate change:

Standing tall, with various branches, trees “absorb excess and harmful CO2 from our atmosphere.”  In a single year, an acre of mature trees will absorb produced by driving 26,000 miles. They generally reduce the emission of greenhouse gases in the air.

Trees will help you breathe clean air. They absorb odour and gases that are pollutant: (nitrogen oxides, ammonia, sulfur dioxide and ozone). They also “filter particulates out of the air by trapping them on their leaves and bark”.

And we can combat loss of species, increase “habitat connectivity between regional forest patches” just by planting trees.

Trees also provide long-term economic benefit, especially with commercial trees- providing food, energy and income.

Canopy.org, an organisation that plants and cares for trees, says “access to trees, green spaces, and parks promotes greater physical activity, and reduces stress, while improving the quality of life in our cities and towns”.

Trees are natural coolers. The evaporation from one tree “can produce the cooling effect of ten room-size, residential air conditioners operating 20 hours a day,” according to Canopy.org.

Go ahead and plant a tree.