Jackson Lovchuk
Contributing Writer
Jimmy Donaldson, more popularly known as Mr. Beast, wanted to do something spe- cial for his 20 million sub- scriber special on his YouTube channel. One Reddit user sug- gested that he should celebrate this milestone by planting 20 million trees to help fight cli- mate change. Mr. Beast is no stranger to attempting ridicu- lously difficult challenges on his channel. Some of his most popular challenge videos in- clude putting 100 million Or- beez in his friends backyard, buying everything in a store and counting to 100,000 in one video.
However, despite his ability to complete insanely difficult challenges, he needed help to plant 20 million trees. He de- cided to join forces with for- mer NASA employee and cur- rent YouTuber Mark Rober to complete the project. After months of planning, the two YouTubers reached an agree- ment with the Arbor Day Foundation and created Team Trees with the goal of plant- ing 20 million trees before the start of 2020. For each dollar donated to Team Trees, the Arbor Day Foundation agreed to plant one tree. These trees are planted in forests of high priority on every continent except for Antarctica.
Mr. Beast and Rober encour- aged other YouTubers to post videos showing their support for Team Trees on Oct. 25, 2019. The YouTube communi- ty responded in a big way with thousands of creators both big and small posting videos and donating to the cause. Some of the most popular supporters of the cause included Jeffree Star, Fine Brothers Entertainment, FaZe Rug and Marques Brownlee. Each of these creators made significant donations to the cause and used their social media presence to support the project. The sup- porters of the project wanted to break the stigma that online content creators only participate in retweet activism and don’t actually contribute to bettering the world.
Team Trees has trended globally for weeks now and has attracted some very im- portant names in the business world. Last week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk donated $1,000,001 to the foundation and even changed his name to Treelon Musk on Twitter. Other big names like Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Shopify CEO Tobias Lutke and YouTube CEO Su- san Wojcicki have all made massive donations to the cause. All of these donations have added up and Team Trees has currently raised over 12.5 mil- lion dollars with almost two full months remaining before 2020 begins.
Mr. Beast and Rober con- tinue to encourage everyone to donate what they can to the cause, stating that each donation is impactful towards achieving the lofty goal. Besides donating money, there are additional ways of joining Team Trees. These methods include writing letters to government officials, volunteering for environmental clean up projects and changing wasteful habits such as not reusing plastic water bottles. Team Trees isn’t going to reverse climate change by itself, but it sends a powerful message that this generation cares about the planet and desires to protect it before it’s too late.