A Billionaire’s Quest to Save a Trillion Trees Is Falling Short

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At the twenty twenty World Economic Forum in Davos, billionaire Mark Benioff wore all black. His fashion choice, he told the CNBC anchor matter of factly, was symbolic.

I'm at a funeral for capitalism here in Davos.

Benioff, who's best known as the co founder and CEO of the software company Salesforce, has been eulogizing capitalism as we know it for years now, saying it's failing its social purpose.

I think if you asked Mark Benioff, I don't think he would say that he's anti capitalist, but I think he would acknowledge that capitalism isn't necessarily working in the best way for everyone.

Sophie Alexander covers philanthropy and billionaires like Benioff for Bloomberg.

News, so he's really into this idea of stakeholder capitalism. It's not just shareholders, it's not the people who own stuff, talk and sales Force, but also just people generally. And he also counts the planet as one of those stakeholders.

At Davos that year, Benioff made a major announcement, one that was supposed to serve a very special stakeholder, mother Nature. There used to be.

Six trillion trees on Earth.

Now there is three trillion, so we should be able to get another trillion back.

Benioff said he was launching a new project with the World Economic Forum to plant or protect one trillion trees by twenty thirty. Yes, that's one trillion trees in ten years. The initiative is called onet dot org. Governments from all over the world have signed on and support companies and institutions across the private sector have made their own pledges. Even then, President Donald Trump got on board. Here he is at the twenty twenty summit committing to the initiative.

Today, I'm pleased to announce the United States will join one Trillion Trees iniative being launched here at the World Economic Form One Trillion Trees.

The idea was simple. Trees are really effective at sucking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Planting them can be good for the planet, and it can also be a good way for companies to reduce their carbon impact without necessarily having to cut back on emissions. But not everyone is enthusiastic about approaches like this. At the same Davos conference, Swedish climate activist Greta Tunberg gave an impassioned speech about the quote empty words and promises made to combat climate change.

Planting trees is good, of course, but it's nowhere near enough of what is needed, and it cannot replace real mitigation and rewilding nature.

Four years, millions of dollars and dozens of pledges later, how close are we to one trillion trees? Did Greta have a point? Today? On the show Why a billionaire decided to go all in on reforestation, Why the private sector followed, and what went wrong? From Bloomberg News, this is the big take. I'm Sarah Holder. Mark Benioff gives a lot of money to different causes. He's donated to support homelessness prevention efforts, got microbiome research, and children's healthcare.

You see this play out in this story with one t dot Org, but also in the past he's done this. It's sort of where he reads one thing and then all of a sudden, he gets really excited about something and he just throws a bunch of money behind it.

And in twenty nineteen, Benioff got excited about something new, a scientific paper out of a Swiss research lab.

There's this paper that comes out from this research lab called Crowther Labs, from this guy named Pumkrowther in Switzerland, and it's a viral science paper which said basically that there's room on the planet for one trillion more trees, and if we were to plant all those trees, it could sequester, basically remove two hundred gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere. And so this is all very exciting to Benioff and he says, oh my god, who's working on this.

But that paper that got Benioff so excited got pushedback from other scientists who said the research had overestimated the carbon storing potential of mass tree planting, and some warned that finding space for so many new trees could end up disrupting ecosystems. Crowther himself has provided more context in the years since that research was published, saying the paper wasn't meant to be a quote prescription for tree planting

People have been pretty obsessed with not just the idea of trees as a solution to climate change, but a trillion trees specifically for a long time. There were two other organizations that I'm aware of, that existed before Benioff started his project, named things like the Trillion Tree Campaign, the Trillion Tree Project, things like that.

Trillion tree really rolls off the tongue. But these prior efforts didn't get the Davos treatment. With Benioff's pocketbook and the World Economic Forums powerful contacts, one t dot org seemed poised to move the needle further. Benioff has spent almost seventeen million dollars on one tea dot org and has committed hundreds of millions more on tree related investments.

Their goal is essentially to get the private sector involved in this thing that's mostly been left up to nonprofits, individuals, governments, and things like that.

Eighty five companies have signed up from all over the world, across sectors. Sophie found that several fossil fuel companies are among them, including the Indian coal giant Adanni Group and the Italian oil super major any. In total, those eighty five companies have pledged more than nine billion trees, according to the World Economic Forums accounting. But those who sign up to be a part of one t dot Org

Some companies are pledging trees as you would expect. Some companies are putting it in terms of hectors, some are putting it in terms of acres, some people are putting it in terms of dollar amount. One company, Brambles, which is a UK company, is putting it in terms of planting two trees for every tree they use, But they don't specify how many trees they use, so it's really hard to determine that. So it means a lot of

And so I mean, why are all these entities signing on to Benioff's one t dot org pledge to begin with? What's in it for them?

Well, the thing is, companies are some of the biggest emitters of carbon, dioxine and other greenhouse gases, especially fossil fuel companies, so they are some of the biggest problem makers. But also some of these companies just feel a social responsibility to do their part in fighting climate change. Of course, there's a pr aspect to it. It looks good when a company says that they're doing these things that make people feel good about shopping with them or banking with them.

Some scientists Sophie spoke to went further. They said climate friendly initiatives like these offer a too convenient excuse for companies to say that they're working to reduce emissions without changing their alliance on fossil fuels. Projects that rely on nature base fixes can be great for the planet, but scientists worry they can also be a distraction from other more effective climate solutions. So, Sophie, are we close to one trillion trees?

From the perspective of one tea dot org and the work they've done, they are absolutely nowhere near close to one trillion trees.

One ta dot org says they can account for as many as two point six billion trees that have been planted or saved as part of their project. That's more than nine hundred and ninety seven billion short of their ultimate goal. When could they achieve their one trillion tree goal?

One t dot org was only set up to last through twenty thirty as part of the uns A Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, So at this rate, there's absolutely nowhere close, even even if you just count all their pledges, So a trillion trees seems kind of like a pipe dream.

When we come back, we explain what might be standing in the way of Benioff's grandest arboreal ambitions, plus why climate scientists say putting so many resources behind these natural carbon offsets might be missing the forest for the trees.

So the way it's supposed to work is a company is supposed to file a report one year after it has.

Made its pledge, and compliance can be inconsistent across the board. Reports for the past year or late. Some aren't in because they aren't doue yet, and some companies have gone years without reporting at all.

So Amazon hasn't filed there, so you can't know what's going on there. Unilever hasn't filed there's either, nor has Nesle for the most recent one.

When Bloomberg reached out, Amazon declined to comment, Unilever didn't respond, and a spokesperson for Nesli said it's close to finalizing its twenty twenty three report. Mark Benioff's own Salesforce hasn't even filed all its documentation, and Sophie says that speaks to a deeper problem with campaigns like one t dot org. It's not always easy to measure progress on the ground.

Salesforce is one of the co founders of one T dot org. Of course it's Benioff's company, and so they've really put a lot of you know, time it appears into this. And Salesforce is also an interesting example because they've actually only filed their reports with partial supporting document for the past two reporting cycles, and they said that that's because it's just really hard to know. It's really hard to have all the information that you need to

Tim Christofferson, Salesforce's head of climate work, told Bloomberg that, quote, we'll be able to have a much much clearer picture in the next reporting round unquote. He also said they want to share their information with the other participating companies because quote the level of sophistication within the companies also varies. Some of them, to be honest, are quite scared. They're concerned that they want to do the right thing, but

So the carbon market works like this. I am a company, and I have all of these emissions that I want to offset so that I can reach net zero or net negative. I'm not going to be able to reduce my emissions really quickly, so instead, I want to go to a market where I can pay someone else to not release emissions and then I can count that against

And investigations into this market by Bloomberg, Green and others found that many of the projects these companies take on are removing far less carbon from the atmosphere than they were designed to. That makes relying on the carbon market as part of a pledge to an initiative like one t dot org even more fraud Why make these pledges if you're not going to file your report or achieve your goal.

A lot of these companies have good intentions, they want to do well, but I just don't think they realize how many resources it takes to actually do this responsibly. Like Salesforce, they spent months, they spent a lot of money. I'm sure they said themselves that the satellite equipment that they're using to monitor these trees is expensive. They're having people go out to far flung pace places to check on the number of trees that they planted, and this

What does Benioff's plan here say about how folks with massive amounts of capital are choosing to direct their attention and their philanthropic resources right now?

I think there's a disconnect between billionaire philanthropists and the science community that is working to understand and fight climate change, Because if you're a billionaire and you're trying to give your money away, it's really easy to fall into the trap of doing just like the biggest, shiniest thing without

Thanks for listening to The Big Take podcast from blue Berg News. I'm Sarah Holder. This episode was produced by Thomas lou It was edited by Aaron Edwards and Amanda Colson Hurley. It was mixed by Veronica Rodriguez. It was fact checked by Alex Sugiura. Naomi Shaven is our senior producer. Our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso. Nicole bumsterbor is our executive producer. Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Please subscribe and review The Big Take wherever you listen to podcasts.