Have you even wondered just how big a trillion is? One trillion is a thousand billions, or equivalently, a million millions.
If you lived to be 80 years of age, in order to have:
— $1 Million you would have to save $34 each day of your life,
— $1 Billion you would have to save $34,000 each day of your life,
— $1 Trillion you would have to save $34 Million each day of your life.
Having grasped the immensity of what a trillion is, the first thing that comes to me is the new two-year federal budget and debt “deal” that was passed on Aug. 1 with bipartisan support in the Senate, 67 to 28. The measure, awaiting Trump’s signature, raises the debt ceiling past the 2020 elections and allows $1.3 trillion for defense and domestic programs over the next two years. That’s a thousand billion dollars plus.
The U.S. federal government is haunted by an irresistible attraction to overspending. Over the 119 years since 1901, including government estimates extending through 2019, the federal budget has been in the red (deficit) 89 times (75 percent of the time) and only 30 times (25 percent) in the black (surplus). The U.S. debt is more than $22 trillion, by far the largest in the world. It has increased by $1 trillion each year since 2007.
Income disparities have become so pronounced that America’s top 10 percent now average more than nine times as much income as the bottom 90 percent. Americans in the top 1 percent are stunningly higher. They average over 39 times more income than the bottom 90 percent. But that gap pales in comparison to the divide between the nation’s top 0.1 percent and everyone else. Americans at this lofty level are taking in over 188 times the income of the bottom 90 percent.
So I’m trying to come to grips with the fact that financial experts expect there to be eleven trillionaires within about 60 years’ time.
Most estimates suggest that Microsoft founder Bill Gates will be the first trillionaire. Already the world’s richest man, Gates has an estimated personal fortune of $87,501,600,000. Add to that the annual Global Wealth Report from Credit Suisse last year: “Two generations ahead, future extrapolation of current wealth growth rates yields almost a billion millionaires, equivalent to 20 per cent of the total adult population.”
“Where,” I asked myself, “might there be an instance in which a trillion has a positive spin?”
I found my answer in a recent study that found that the earth has room to plant a trillion trees and that it would help to mitigate global heating. The study earned headlines throughout the world.
Obviously, not every place in the world is suitable for planting trees. The study, The global tree restoration potential, published in the journal Science in July 2019, established the potential for every place on Earth for new forests. The authors found that planting a trillion trees would basically help with the last 25 years of CO2 emissions.
Let’s put the trillion trees into context. There are already about 3 trillion trees on the planet, per a 2015 study, Mapping tree density at a global scale, published in the journal Nature. Another trillion is a full third increase. Given deforestation over the past few thousand years, this is not as big as you might think. The study says 15.3 billion trees are being chopped down every year and estimates that 46 percent of the world’s trees have been cleared over the past 12,000 years. The current 3 trillion trees used to be closer to 6 trillion.
There are opinions that we will not reach that goal in time to seriously mitigate CO2 emissions within the next crucial eleven years. But check out what IS being done:
— New Zealand has committed to planting a billion trees.
— China plans to grow 6.66 million hectares of new forest this year, having already created 83,521,618 acres of forest in the past five years, a forest the size of France.
— Thousands of Ethiopians took part in planting a record-breaking number of 353,633,660 tree seedlings in a 12-hour period on July 29, far above their initial goal of 200 million trees. The record-breaking tree planting is just a small part of the nation’s Green Legacy initiative to plant a total four billion trees between May and October of this year..
Planting a tree is something everyone can do.
John Bos lives and breathes in Shelburne Falls. He invites comments and dialogue at john01370@gmail.com.