NEBRASKA CITY – Congressman Jeff Fortenberry offered his support for forest’s role in sustainability while visiting Arbor Day Farm in Nebraska City on Tuesday.

Arbor Day Foundation is a corporate partner and leading collaborator in the World Economic Forum’s Trillion Trees Initiative and Fortenberry recognizes a trillion trees project entered by house resolution in February by Arkansas Congressman Bruce Westerman.

The Trillion Trees Act has a goal of planting a trillion trees globally by 2050. It also calls for new growth to help prevent wildfires and use of wood products to hold carbon out of the atmosphere.

Fortenberry said Nebraska is at the center of the Trillion Trees movement.

 

Fortenberry: “Obviously we want to move toward an economy that is run by renewables as much as we can. The problem with carbon pollution in the air .. . We are all becoming much more aware of that particular issue in terms of environmental sensitivity and how it affects, again, weather volatility and other issues.

Arbor Day Foundation has been way out in front of this for decades and helps keep Nebraska centered on the movement around a vision of conservation and stewardship for the 21st Century.”

 

A House press release says Nebraska Congressman Don Bacon is a co-sponsor of the House’s Trillion Trees Act. A press release says Bacon expects the act to help reverse the disastrous effects of deforestation, prevent wildfires and sustain critical ecosystems.

Bacon: “In fact, it is estimated that planting half a trillion trees could reduce atmospheric carbon by approximately 25 percent.”

The Arbor Day Foundation is working with 1t.org to plant 100 million trees by 2022

Fortenberry: “The key to doing this is moving toward a more sustainable economy where we move from just pure extraction, which happens in a lot of places around the world to where we take and make and waste to one in which we regenerate. The best way we regenerate is with trees. Nature’s own gift. “

Congressman Westerman says trees are the most advanced carbon capture devices on the planet.