I found this story on the "About My Planet" website. Apparently there has been a push by a group to plant trees all over the planet. First I've heard about it. Quoted below is the article. Read it. It's encouraging and surprising about what country has planted the most trees.
From the website:
"It is always nice to mention good news when you are talking about the environment. With so much bad news out there, any good news can brighten up your day, and today there is good news for the environment. This good news does not come out of eco-friendly British Columbia, or the progressive European Union. Nope, it comes from Kenya, a place that has some of the highest poverty levels on the planet.
The United Nations has put forth an initiative to plant billions of trees to help the environment. Called Plant for the Planet: Billion Trees Campaign, it has the goal of planting trees all over the planet over the next few years to reduce greenhouse gases and to help make the world a greener place, like it used to be before humans got chainsaw happy around the planet.
As part of this, Kenya has pledged to plant 5,000 trees in the Karua Forest to fight climate change, promote carbon reduction and to clean up the Karura River, which has suffered in recent years. The UN picked the perfect day for this as well; Valentine's Day. What better day to say you love the Earth by planting a tree, than Valentine's Day?
Thousands attended the event because many of the trees are planted in the memory of loved ones who have died, while other trees are just being planted for the love of the planet; our planet.
So far, the Billion Trees Campaign has been an incredible success. At this point, 2.6 billion trees have been planted around the globe with 4.3 billion trees pledged to be planted this year. However, it is not quite on the mark of planting seven billion trees by the end of 2009, which will represent one tree for every person on the planet. That being said, 2,600,000,000 trees planted is a big step in the right direction. That equates to billions, upon billions of tons of carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere. It is expected a few billion more trees will be planted before the end of 2009.
Do you want to know what country has planted the most trees of any country on Earth for this UN campaign? If you guess Canada, the European Union or the United States, you would be wrong. Ethiopia is the correct answer. So far in this campaign, this small country has planted an astonishing 700,000,000 trees!"
http://www.aboutmyplanet.com/green-news/kenya-turning-green-trees/
