Working at a pace of a little more than 2 million trees an hour, volunteers in India have blown away the previous world record of trees planted in a single day, which was held by Pakistan at 847,275. The effort was enormous:
More than 800,000 students, government officials, and volunteers gathered in India’s populous Uttar Pradesh state to break a tree-planting Guinness world record earlier this week. They planted 49.3 million trees in 24 hours on Monday, nearly meeting their goal of 50 million but still crushing the previous world record of 847,275, set in Pakistan in 2013. “The world has realized that serious efforts are needed to reduce carbon emissions to mitigate the effects of global climate change,” Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav told volunteers, according to the Associated Press.
This undertaking is not new to India, as home of the Forest Man, and seems prudent for a country sitting at #4 on the list of countries with the highest carbon dioxide output.
To be fair to Pakistan, the group of people who set the original record of almost 850,000 numbered at only 300. If the volunteers in India had worked at their pace they could have planted about 2.259 billion!
And today we celebrate...