Liberals and conservatives don’t agree on much, including when it comes to combating climate change. But there is one surprising behavior where partisans from both ends of the spectrum seem to have more common ground than previously thought: planting trees. Our new research suggests that finding climate actions with bipartisan support is already possible–even in a country as politically polarized as the United States.
Planting trees matters; that’s why we measured it. As trees grow, they slow climate change by removing carbon dioxide from the air, storing it, and releasing oxygen into the atmosphere. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggested that 950 million hectares of new forests could help limit the increase in global average temperature to 1.5-degrees Celsius.