Or to recontextualize: The article talks about a time span of around 45 years. That's around 1.7 billion trees. Remember, that's an english (short) billion, 1700 million. (In other languages a billion is a million millions, and not just a thousand millions.)

If a worker can plant 20 trees a day and works 200 days a year, that means around half a million people are more than enough to do it. In a country with around 1400 million people, that's 0.035% of the population, or roughly one in 3000 people.

Suddenly, it's not all that crazy anymore.

[–] Worstdriver@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Are we talking 10 to the 9th power or the 12th?

I also did some reading up on this. I live in British Columbia and reforestation is a big deal. Apparently a tree planter can plant 2,000 seedlings a day. More if the terrain is good and they're experienced. So yeah, I can see it now.

Though I still wonder about the survival rate of the plantings, but How question is indeed answered.

[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

Popular Mechanics is US-based, so they use short billions: 1bio = 1 000 000 000.

You are right, long billions (1bio = 1 000 000 000 000) would be a lot more. Though even that would still be possible, but then ~35% of the chinese population would have to be employed in planting trees.