COLUMBUS, OH-- Yes, he’s crazy, but very passionate. Ryan Rodgers is the man in question, the Director of a new organization, GreenifyNow. In a recent interview, he said, “Yes, a billion. It is quite a hard number to wrap your head around, but I am still young and very determined to get it done. I figure that I have at least thirty years to plant a billion trees. It is my life”
Why plant so many trees? He explains, “The earth is going through a warming trend, which usually natural, but us humans have accelerated the rate of the warming by producing massive amounts of carbon dioxide emissions. We have depended upon fossil fuels for our energy for hundreds of years, and will for many more.” Ryan then asks, “What naturally removes carbon dioxide from the air?” Trees, was the answer. “The goal is to plant enough trees to pull the excess carbon dioxide out of the air and lock it back up in the earth for another few hundred thousand years. That is what trees do.” Now it was all coming together.. He continued on, and it made even more sense, “For every one ton of mass a tree produces, one and a half tons of carbon dioxide are removed from the air, of that one and a half tons of carbon dioxide about one ton is turned into oxygen and the other half ton is locked up in the tree and the earth as solid organic carbon.”
Back to the insane claim, a billion trees. “It can be done. It will take time, and I know it’s going to be a slow start. I don’t intend on doing it on my own though, that would break my back and my checkbook real quick. I have started a website where I am asking people to donate towards erasing their carbon debt for the year, which amounts to about 20 trees, per person, per year. Volunteers and I will then plant the trees. In addition to the website, I also have a MySpace page where I have found over six hundred people in the past week that are willing to help” Ryan then looked me in the eye and emphasized, “I cannot personally plant a billion trees, but I will be responsible for getting it done.”
Ryan can be contacted at rrodgers@greenifynow.org , and he openly welcomes all ideas that will help GreenifyNow reach a larger audience.
