Zain Qureshi ’23 News Reporter
These past few weeks, the EcoDorm Electricity challenge has been underway. The challenge is a great way to better our immediate environment, change our habits, and improve our awareness. This effort, however, can be furthered: Mercersburg Academy could do more to help save the planet.
The EcoDorm challenge has been a great start to create a greener Mercersburg, and I believe that it can catalyze more service projects to fight climate change. With a 300-acre campus, one of the best ways the school can help the environment is simply through planting more trees. Since most of the trees on campus are concentrated in certain areas, there are more vacant spaces to plant more. Planting trees is a simple way to express the academy’s commitment to stopping global warming, and the space we have would be optimal to combat catastrophic climate change. In this day and age, we must make sacrifices in order to reverse the damage humans have done to the planet: sacrificing some of open land for trees would be a step in the right direction.
Planting trees is also one of the cheapest methods to combat climate change. The cost-efficiency of the plan is one of the reasons many are participating in the “Trillion Tree Campaign” (a plan to plant a trillion trees around the world). I believe that our school should be involved in this great campaign . As a school, we can register all the new trees we plant and contribute alongside the many schools and organizations that are already participating in the same initiative. Scientists believe that planting a trillion trees could offset around two thirds of all man-made emissions in the atmosphere today. As a community, we should contribute to that effort. With the abundance of empty space around campus–from the JV soccer fields to the MOE barn–we have the capacity to make an impact. Perhaps even a tree for every member of the school community!
An act as simple as planting trees can create a better, safer, cleaner world for our generation and the generations after us. It is important as a school, a nation, and a planet to focus on changing our habits in an effort to help the environment. Planting more trees on campus is a great start towards a healthier Earth for us all. Let us begin planting more trees in this place we call home.