Just to give you a sense of what this means on a global scale, there are about three trillion trees on the planet—which works out to about 422 trees for every person on Earth. Humans are responsible for the loss of fifteen billion trees a year. About five billion new trees are planted or sprout annually, yielding a net loss each year of ten billion trees. So as much as people may love trees, in the big picture, we are not very good to them. Since the beginning of human civilization, the number of trees on the planet has dropped by 46 percent.
