Everything Wrong with #TeamTrees
[video transcript]
Congrats MrBeast on reaching your goal and planting 20 million trees.
Though, from now on, I’m going to say raising $20M dollars, which is an outstanding feat, I don’t know why you’re putting on the old rigmarole to make this fit a meme! Because that is exactly what this situation is. A charity designed around meme.
Now, #TeamTree started with a tweet from MrBeast. He’s got a tradition of giving a milestone subscriber, well, something stupid. He’s given out pennies, popcorn, cookies, whatever little bits he can get millions of. By Donaldson’s own admission, he just kind of dumps it and leaves.
Imagine that! So, at level 20 Million, he reached out to his fans.
“What should I give my 20 millionth subscriber? I was gonna give him 20 million pennies but I procrastinated and I think it’s to [sic] late to get them in time.”
Putting their heads together, reddit rallied around an idea. It wasn’t nonsensical, like giving someone 20 million pennies. Reddit wanted to do something positive. Reddit wanted 20 Million trees.
MrBeast teased interest, but was he committed? Would he plant 20 million trees? MrBeast eventually returned with word that he had something in the works, and that it would take a while.
Finally, came the official announcement. In a video proudly displaying several counts of planning ineptitude, Donaldson announced the big scheme to PLANT 20 million trees by 2020. He opens the video with the line,
“You guys spammed me to plant 20 million trees on twitter, reddit, all over my comment section, so I made it happen. Today We Will be planting 20 Million Trees.”
This sentence is bad, but not because of the misplaced participle. It’s bad because it’s unethical. By the end of the video, it’s clear that Donaldson and company had not planted the sum total of trees, and they never planned to. In fact, that sentence turned out to be the beginning of a 7-MIN long advertisement for #TeamTrees, a fundraiser. See, Donaldson spins that he’s developed some sort of deal with The Arbor Day Foundation, where they will plant a tree for every dollar donated.
The entire video the entire video is just a longform awareness ad for #TeamTrees, a FUNDRAISER to raise $20 million dollars. See, MrBeast pulled the ‘ol bait-and-switch, to make things “simple.”
“$1.00 = 1 Tree.”
Now I’m only 2% Metal Alchemist, but I do know the law of equivalent exchanges means the trade off must have equal value. Funny thing is, the value of money is well defined, but the value of a tree can be, let’s say, varied. Nonetheless, throughout this entire campaign, Donaldson and his proxies make the “$1.00 = 1 Tree,” claim over, and over, and over again.
It may seem trivial, but three very important things changed when Donaldson conjured up this answer to online pressure to plant those trees.
First, by working with an established foundation, Donaldson relieves himself from most of the follow-through and all of the culpability.
Second, he places the responsibility of getting the money onto his viewer-base.
Lastly, and most sketchily, he prevaricated donations with a direct action. $1.00 = 1 Tree. So if you donated one dollar, you did it under the presumption that one tree would be planted. This will become important later.
MrBeast’s plan, theoretically, was a good one. The Arbor Day Foundation does have the same Charity Navigator rating as the Red Cross, and their involvement meant less responsibility for Donaldson, while giving him the experience needed to make it happen.
All Donaldson had to do was utilize his clout as MrBeast to “activate” his viewers, fans, and their auxiliaries into raising most of the money. Like MrBeast, many people began to see this as an opportunity for exposure. Yes, #TeamTrees took off with unprecedented fanfare as youtubers, corporations, and billionaires all seized upon the opportunity to buy some goodwill and attention with a donation.
Elon Musk, billionaire and brave environmental opportunist, donated $1M dollars. Though I suspect, if he really wanted to make a change and wasn’t so focused on legacy, he’d probably spend more of “his” money trying to re-terraform Earth.
To put things into perspective, we can examine the Tesla Model 3. According to research from the ifo Institute, production of the battery alone produces around 11-15 tons of CO2. There have been 457,980 Model 3’s delivered to dealerships around the world at time of writing. In just three years of production, making the batteries of mor the Model-3 produced 5,032,780 tons of CO2. How much does a tree clean again?
According to various online sources, “a new forest can sequester 2.5 tons of carbon per acre per year.” So to sequester the carbon released in production of the batteries, Elon would need to plant 2,015,112 ACRES of new forest to offset CO2 Emissions from the Model 3 battery production (yes this is just production.)
So how many trees are in that many acres? Utilizing the 8ft-between-tree spacing model that #TeamTrees showcased, results in 681 trees per acre.
That’s 1.37B trees.
How much did Elon donate again? He might be a little short…
See, what Elon is doing, is using charity to deflect from the reality of his industry. Making cars is bad for the environment. Ceasing car manufacturing entirely would solve more than electric cars ever could. But, if you look at their website today, you’ll find them saying just how much they’ve saved the world, in terms of CO2 emissions. At least that’s what I think they’re saying. The footnote at the bottom says, “The CO2 savings figures above reflect tailpipe emissions reductions from historical cumulative miles driven by the global Tesla vehicle fleet.”
Here is the study that the “2.5 tons/acre” claim that I kept seeing all over the internet. Interestingly, it contains a lot of the same information used by #TeamTrees to justifying why planting 20 million trees was the more pragmatic choice over buying an existing forest, as opposed to other options.
“biomass(energy) combined with carbon capture and storage processes (BECCS) (Azar et al. 2010). BECCS has been found to possess the best abatement potential within the power and industrial sectors...”
And if that little caveat, “within the power and industrial sectors,” set of a few red flags, the honest conclusion comes at the end of that paragraph, “...there is high uncertainty in its large-scale implementation.”
$1.00 = 1 TREE
I can only speculate, but I think it has something to do with the $1.00 = 1 Tree equation. I mean, think about it - that is so simple, it’s good. Almost TOO good. Where does the $1.00 valuation of a tree come from. #TeamTrees website doesn’t go into it. The Arbor Day Foundation has been surprisingly quiet about this whole thing. Why don’t they even mention #TeamTrees on their website?
If I had to posit why, I would say it’s because they’ve quantified the value of their core service. The tricky thing for the Arbor Day Foundation is they’ve placed a monetary value onto the planting of a tree, and they’re kind of beholden to it, because they’ve already held the fundraiser and received the money. If the deal had just been to raise $20M, they could be flexible and say things like, “our expenses went up,” but now, The Arbor Day Foundation is expected to plant 20 million trees for exactly 20 million dollars by 2022.
1 Tree = $1.00
Checking their net income over the past 4 years will reveal it hovering around $45M-$55M, which is a ton of money, but it also means that the #TeamTrees donation would increase their tree budget 40-45% INSTANTLY. One risk to an instant increase in working capital like this is mismanagement of money, and it comes from being unprepared. This can take many forms, including overspending, increased administrative costs, long-distance management, and well, basically just getting too big fer yer britches.
They can’t save it like nonprofits like to do. They can’t have a surplus of this cash, they MUST plant those trees to comply with the promises they made in MrBeast’s advertisement. Reddit demands it, The internet paid for it. Donaldson is taking credit for it. You have to plant those trees. And each one has to cost $1.00, because that’s what we donated for.
$1.00 = 1 tree. That’s how Doanldson sold this campaign. He cannot deviate. Why? Let’s do a thought experiment.
$1.01 = 1 TREE
Hypothetically, what if the trees cost more? And not by a lot, what if their estimations are just 1 cent off? What if a tree costs $1.01? Doesn’t seem like much, one cent is just 1% of $1.00, but if we examine this at scale, the problem becomes apparent. What’s 1% of 20M? 200,000. That’s $200,000 or 200,000 trees, depending on how you look at it. In this scenario, will those trees get planted? Who’s paying for them? Will it get paid for? I don’t know, there’s no transparency when it comes to this aspect of the plan.
$0.99? = 1 TREE
And, HYPOTHETICALLY, if it comes out that the trees cost one cent less than a dollar, that’s when things could really get messy. What’s the plan in this situation? What’s the plan for .99 cent trees? Does every donor get 1% back? Does the Arbor Day foundation keep it? Do they plant extra trees? Is it a bonus for the board?
WHAT HAPPENS? Does MrBoast finally get to give someone 20 Million pennies? Strange, how we’re right back to this idea. The plain fact is, we don’t know — because there is no transparency..
$0.85 = 1 Tree?
All of these ‘What If…’ scenarios make me think there’s a buffer. Maybe it’s one cent, maybe it’s five. Maybe it’s 15. It could be 50% or more for all we know, and that’s the problem. That’s a range of $200K to $10M+ dollars. Don’t get things twisted, when you’re dealing with huge numbers, the only way to gauge it is to estimate -- that is not the issue. If they have a buffer in place, they (meaning MrBeast and the Arbor Day Foundation) should have disclosed that information in an obvious manner to anyone donating #TeamTrees. That’s what transparency is all about.
$0.69? $0.50? $0.35?
If they don’t need a +/- buffer on the tree average and are certain they can cover the costs of 1 tree = $1.00, to the cent, twenty-million times, then I think we should hire them to handle the finances of the entire world. That’s right, I’m willing to base the world economy off a tree charity if they’re that good with their finances.
Personally, I had to know how much a tree costs. So I looked it up. Seeds are cheap AF, you can get hundreds for a $1.00. But those aren’t trees. Saplings aren’t exactly trees either, but that’s what we’re sold when watching MrBeast and Co. plant in the video. Saplings come in various sizes and ages, and interestingly, two different sizes are used in the MrBeast video.
The first size appears with the MrBeast crew, and is around 18-24” [about a year old]. These vary in price, but I found bulk prices for blue spruces, an evergreen that offers photosynthesis year-round, for $.63 per tree. Not exactly $1.00. Keep in mind, this doesn’t include labor or shipping costs, or all that extra stuff, but, considering the volunteer force of the arbor day foundation and their non-profit tax-exempt status, I think we can just write those off as a wash.
The second saplings actually seems to be of The Arbor Day Foundation working, and those trees are only about >6”[about a month or two old]. These are even cheaper at just .30 cents! Wow, I hope they’re paying those volunteers.
The lack of transparency in this fundraiser has me asking A LOT of questions, like are these trees going to be planted on public land? If not, who owns these trees? Will we get to visit MrBeast Forest, or did we just pay for some millionaire's tree line? Could the Arbor Day foundation theoretically set up a christmas tree farm-for-profit with that money? WHO KNOWS? That’s why defining expectations is paramount when working on such a large scale.
So, like I said, Donaldson started this campaign unethically. He hadn’t made it happen. He hadn’t planted 20 million trees. Everything was a farce, a lie, a sham. Were these misleading supposed to be a joke? Is it commentary on clickbait culture? If so, why is the charity video the time to do that?
Look, I wanted to make a positive video here, I really did -- there’s nothing I love more than a community working together to achieve a goal that will have a positive impact. And I love trees. I don’t know Jimmy Donaldson personally, but he seems like a kind enough person that might actually want to do something good for the world. And that’s his problem. He’s just a good guy (with money), trying to do good things (with money), and everyone is telling him he’s doing a good job (with money) and that everything is good (with money) and they like him (with money) and he’s really helping people (with money) and he’s making a difference (with money) and he’s activating a generation (with money) and its changing the world (with money) and he’s uniting a community (with money) and he’s the Green messiah sent down from the ether-net to save us from that smoke monster in Fern Gully.
It wasn’t always about money for Donaldson. He used to work on the cheap. Counting to one-hundred-thousand in one video. Stuff anyone could do. It was simple. It was viral. It was free.
Then, there was a point. A point where Donaldson realized what he set out to do with his YouTube channel. His path to prominence went from Gaming, to Creator Tips, to Publicity Stunts in a straight line. See, that first time he handed out money wasn’t to help the homeless -- it was to grow his channel, to go viral. Now, everything he does goes viral.
Everyone worried about Pewdiepie and his web of influence better start figuring out how to address the influence of MrBeast. If he continues on the path he’s on now, there’s no doubt that he will, one-day, surpass Mr. Pie in subscribers. And unlike PewDiePie, Donaldson is openly trying to influence the world.
He wants to be admired for his good acts. It’s what drives him to make videos on YouTube. Unchecked, MrBeast’s misguided pursuit of this attention will have insidious effects within the cultures he’s accepted by. We cannot continue to let these game-show spectacles of capitalism be youtube’s golden standard of giving.
A term I discovered a while back is “Weaponized Nostalgia,” and it’s used to describe media packed with pop-culture references to connect with an audience’s past. The “weaponized” part comes from the fact that this is a destructive force. The nostalgia is not being used as a storytelling device, but rather to tap into existing emotions, without providing any real message other than “Watch our Show” or Buy our Merch.”
So, from now on, I’m going to call what MrBeast does “Weaponized Philanthropy,” because I think his flavor of giving will have long-term consequences on how society as a whole perceives charity and giving online.
Jimmy -- as an entertainer and promoter, you are very good. However, your giving is misguided. GET HELP, and I’m certain you can have the impact you want to have.
Philanthropy is different from charity; it’s focus is long-term. That means SOLVING problems, not treating symptoms. We need fundraisers, but we need them designed to have the most impact - not create the most attention. #TeamTrees is a distraction at best, and at worst - it’s impossible.
My advice on giving money to charities -- do it only once per year. When a company asks for a donation at the register, they are using social pressure to manipulate you into giving. Don’t fall for it. You never want to give to something if you haven’t vetted how it’s being used. Give your donations all at once, one time per year, and diversify that donation between the causes you care about and have vetted. If you feel like helping a cause out at other points in the year, it’s simple: just volunteer.
The reason I’m discussing this is that while Donaldson is still developing as a philanthropist, his power level is increasing exponentially. This man went from giving away $10,000 a couple years ago, to raising $20M in just a couple months. Each time giving away a little more, all while upping the ante on attention-attracting spectacles. Does he have the foresight and integrity to notice this? Can’t he see that every step up comes with more and more responsibility?
Donaldson knows his fanbase has impressionable viewers. He has the analytics, and the team trees website even states,
“TeamTrees.org is a positive, solution-oriented campaign, and the website is visited by a lot of kids. We reserve the right to remove donation messages that contain links, spam, or otherwise abusive content.”
He knows these viewers will rally behind him and a big cause, just like they did for PewDiePie in the T-Series saga. So I have to ask, At what point will it be enough? Do you have enough friends, money, influence yet? I can say, I don’t think you deserve a modicum more.
Now I made a $1.00 donation to TeamTrees, leaving the message - “what happens if the trees are .99?” just to make sure I had the whole picture. No reply, not that I expected one, though I can wait. I’ve only just made it, you know, because they are still accepting donations. You have to give out personal information, like your name, email, and optionally, your phone number, which is pretty sketchy IMO, but at the bottom, they do include, “And we will never sell your data,” which is a step up from Honey’s privacy policy. (Check the other video) There’s no further information shared about the terms of the donation, other than $1.00 = 1 Tree. I also noticed how hard they are pushing the “good on yah,” language.
“you’re a good human and are now officially a member of #TeamTrees! Together, we planted 20M by 2020! And we couldn’t have done it without your help. If you know any other good humans, use your favorite social platforms and invite them to join the team too!”
Ending with the CTA was a nice touch, but maybe you’re starting to see why this pseudo-cause is a bad thing. There were kids setting up school fundraisers for this thing! Climate change demands direction action NOW, and this marketing stunt truly detracts from the conversation.
I wanted to say something else about trees as a solution specifically as well, because I’m honestly sick of it. I’ve seen the trees they hand out to kids on Arbor Day to plant at home -- they’re wrapped in plastic with directions xeroxed onto bleached paper. Stop pretending like planting a tree will save the world -- IT WON’T.
Whatever CO2 these trees suck up doesn’t disappear. I know we’ve all been living on the cartoon utopia where people breathe out CO2 and trees breathe it in and everything is in perfect harmony, but that’s not how it works. Mammals breathe out CO2, and the trees take that CO2 and break it down with photosynthesis, ejecting the O’s and keeping the C.
They utilize the carbon to create -- get this -- carbohydrates, and return the oxygen into the air. Can you guess what carbohydrates are? If you guessed carbon and hydration, you’re right but you also need to limit exposure to gatorade advertisements. Carbohydrates are used within the plant, giving it structure and form. That’s how trees grow, they accumulate carbon. That’s what wood is. So when these trees die, that carbon is re-released into the air through various methods of decay, including burning or decomposition.
Think of trees as the air-filters for your home, but instead of being able to throw them away or clean them, you had to keep them in your house. Eventually these filters would start to break down, re-releasing everything they caught back into the air. You could bury them deep underground, you know, like where the oil was...but for some reason, I don’t think they budgeted for that.
Simply put, trees are only a way to pause the damage we’re causing. They cannot reverse our situation. Planting trees is passing the buck to another generation. It’s exactly what Gretta Thurnburg is upset about -- yet I still see these memes putting Donaldson up on a pedestal as some sort of tree messiah.
One dollar equals one tree. One dollar equals one tree. JOIN #TeamTrees. JOIN OUR CULT. PLANT TREES. GIVE MONEY. PLANT MONEY. BEAST GOOD TREE GOOD
[Crackly] BEAST (pause) MASTER (pause) TREE (pause) LIFE.
The trees don’t matter. It’s the way we live...and creating half-assed causes, that are technically a financial impossibility, is a distraction.
Estimating how long it would take to plant a tree, I used this clip and number as a baseline. [clip of girl talking about 473 holes] Now I know that seems like a lot, but the most efficient way of handling this is certainly some sort of assembly line, digging/planting situation. This would also double-up the time considering each hole would need a digger and a planter. Since this video already has enough math for an entire semester at art school, I used this number and divided it over the course of 8 hours, conveniently resulting in 59.125 holes per hour, or one hole for every 1 minute. Which means, yes MATPAT, I’ve beat you to how long it should take to plant 20 million trees -- less than 20 million minutes.
Now let’s put a dollar amount on those minutes. A living wage is, at least, $15/hr, so we’ll use that as our monetary baseline for estimating the labor costs. 20M minutes is about 333,333.33 hours which gives us a clean total of $5M dollars in labor. But that’s just a theory. A TREE THEORY.
Sources:
Article on Carbon Data Sourced by Team Trees - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41050-019-00012-3
MrBeast Planting 20 Mill Trees Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPJKxAhLw5I
Tree Calculator - https://www.treeplantation.com/tree-spacing-calculator.html
Honey Follow Up - https://www.reddit.com/r/Frugal/comments/4phdxn/for_users_of_the_honey_coupon_chrome_extension/
EU Fact Check Model 3 Emissions - https://eufactcheck.eu/factcheck/mostly-false-electric-cars-generate-higher-emissions-than-diesel-cars/
#TeamTrees Wiki - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Trees
Tesla Model 3 Wiki - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_3
Tesla Carbon Impact - https://www.tesla.com/carbonimpact
What is a Misplaced Participle (for people who slept through english) - https://www.englishgrammar101.com/module-9/verbals-and-phrases/lesson-4/misplaced-participial-phrases
Carbon Sequestration Potential from Large-Scale Reforestation & Sugarcane Expansion on Abandoned Agricultural Lands in Brazil - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41050-019-00012-3
Arbor Day Foundation Annual Report (2016 - 20 - https://www.arborday.org/generalinfo/annualreport/documents/annual-report-2018-2019.pdf - https://www.arborday.org/generalinfo/annualreport/documents/2018-annual-report.pdf - https://www.arborday.org/generalinfo/annualreport/documents/2017-annual-report.pdf - https://www.arborday.org/generalinfo/annualreport/documents/2016-annual-report.pdf
https://www.arborday.org/generalinfo/annualreport/documents/2015-annual-report.pdfCharity Navigator - Arbor Day Foundation - https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=4157
Charity Navigator - Amazon Conservation Association - https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=7141
Charity Navigator - American Forest Foundation - https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=5418
Charity Navigator - Pine Tree Society - https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=7736
#teamtrees website (see the faq at bottom)
https://teamtrees.org$1=1 Tree Cost Breakdown from One Tree Planted, a different “$1=1 Tree,” at least showing the 13-20% flexible administrative costs.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=zmEJW0kOZ3M