At just nine-years-old, Felix Finkbeiner began a project to restore the world’s forests – one tree at a time— after feeling concerned about the lack of action amongst the adults leaders of the world.
He decided to bring together the children activists of the world and ‘Plant-for-the-Planet’ was born.Four years into the project, Finkbeiner had already been able to plant thousands and thousands of trees, but he wanted to make an impact on the global scale.
He brought his passion in the form of a speech in front of the United Nations Grand Assembly. In that speech he stated that, “We children know adults know the challenges and they know the solutions. We don’t know why there is so little action.” Soon after, Planet-for-the-Planet partnered with the UN’s Billion Tree Campaign with a new goal: plant one trillion trees.
This huge number if accomplished would mean 150 trees per person on the planet, an accomplishment that would have immeasurable environmental benefits including oxygen production and increased biodiversity.
Today, he continues to motivate young activist, scientists, and dreamers to step up to the plate and take action in any way they can. The road to preventing climate change is unclear but Finkbeiner doesn’t believe that should stop the change, “If we follow the scientists and we act and in 20 years find out that they were wrong, we didn’t do any mistakes. But if we follow the skeptics and in 20 years find out that they were wrong, it will be too late to save our future.”