Today's post is about the reforestation and afforestation project called Team Trees, which was started in late October 2019 by Youtube content creators, MrBeast and Mark Rober. Collectively, these two Youtube channels have over 35 million subscribers. TeamTrees is an initiative to raise 20 million dollars to be used to plant trees around the world. For each dollar donated, one tree will be planted by partner Arbor Day Foundation — the world's largest non-profit tree planting organization. As of November 21, 2019, 15,877,823 million dollars have been donated, which will eventually result in over 15 million more trees planted. It can be hard to mobilize people to take action to combat climate change, so why has this fundraising project been so successful thus far?
The Team Trees project was initiated by MrBeast's subscribers who spammed MrBeast to plant 20 million trees once he reached 20 million subscribers on Youtube. Together, MrBeast and Mark Rober expertly capitalized on their social influence and widely publicized the project. The project quickly captured the attention of their subscribers. Some people respected and supported MrBeast and Mark Rober's content. Others enjoyed MrBeast and Mark Rober's use of comedy and technology that resulted in entertaining educational videos. Viewers perceived the project as fun instead of a chore. Many other Youtubers backed the Team Tree initiative by making Youtube videos about the project and then posting it on their own social media.
Team Trees has been so successful because it delivers instant gratification and the ability to see fast change. A few weeks ago I attended UCL Professor of Behavioural Neuroscience, Kate Jeffrey's seminar "The Psychology of Climate Inaction.” The recording of her seminar about the psychology of climate inaction can be found here. Professor Jeffrey posits that one reason why there is climate inaction is due to how humans perceive change that occurs slowly over time. Humans do not perceive slow change very well. So, if people do not see immediate results from their actions combating climate change, they may be less inclined to take action.
Team Trees’s goal to plant 20 million trees has a 2020 deadline. The imposition of a deadline comports with Professor Jeffrey and Slawinski et. al’s argument that we are more likely to take action with short term rewards. Collectively, everyone is working together to accomplish a goal before the start of 2020 (Slawinski et al. 2017). I sometimes find myself checking the Team Trees website to see their progress, and am happy to see the tree counter slowly move towards the $20,000,000.00 mark.
In climate change, it can be hard to see fast change, because it is hard to put a price on climate damage and climate inaction. Team Trees however effectively put a price on climate action and gave viewers the ability to see the immediate impact of their donations. One dollar donation equaled one tree. In making a donation, the donor chooses the number of trees to be planted. When viewing how much others have donated, you see the dollar amount depicted only in number of trees. MrBeast is shown putting dollars into a bucket, and instantly planting that number of trees. This effectively links the idea of one dollar being converted into one tree for the viewers. People like seeing progress, which you can see with the live tree donation counter on the Team Trees website. By making the tree planting process so public, people feel involved in the initiative and are more incentivized to take part.
Professor Kate Jeffrey also posits that climate inaction is partially a result of seeing other peoples' lives going on as “business as usual,” and therefore we do not understand why we should take action that disrupts our daily lives. The publicity efforts of Team Trees donations combats this in a clever way. On teamtrees.org, the project's official website, you not only see the most recent donations, but you also can see who has planted the "most trees." People may be incentivized to donate more money when they see other well known figures making donations. In turn, other public figures may see what their contemporaries are doing and decide also to donate trees/money because it will make them look good to the public eye or because they feel pressured to do so by the public. People may see respected popular figures, such as famous musicians, entrepreneurs, or large companies donating and therefore may want to donate as well. These figures and companies include Elon Musk, Pewdiepie, Alan Walker, and the American phone company Verizon Wireless.
If you are interested in watching Kate Jeffrey’s whole talk, it is linked below.
The Psychology of Climate Action (Kate Jeffrey)
According to Amal et al., a focus on environmentally responsible collective action will have a larger positive mitigation and adaptation impact, and be more effective than individual actions. Individual actions are helpful, but larger actions are required to combat large-scale environmental issues. In the case of Team Trees, people donate money and time, but they are also changing the process and procedure of donations. This links the community together and is a form of collective action. The spheres of influence on a person are demonstrated in Figure 1 below.
Figure 1: It is demonstrated that a person's action is most effective when it has an impact on a system larger than themself.
Although MrBeast has not been the most environmentally friendly Youtuber in the past, he acknowledges he is taking action now to try to make up for some of his previous apathy. He highlights the unfortunate, but true point, that current generations take part in retweet activism, where they simply retweet a cause, but do not actually take action to combat it. The Team Trees project is unique because it gives people an easy way to fight climate change. It is incredible how Youtube and other social media platforms have effectively mobilized communities to take action.
If you are interested in donating to Team Trees or checking out the campaign website, please click here. I am linking the Team Tree website as well as MrBeast's and Mark Rober's Team Tree videos below.
Team Trees Official Website
MrBeast's Team Trees Video
Mark Rober's Team Trees Video
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