I don't see any negative point of view towards the initiative in your comment's parent, but additional information that helps understand the context of this initiative and challenges you should care about if you think this initiative is a good thing.

It also didn't compare China and Pakistan to the US (negatively nor positively), though I appreciate you adding even more context.

> How is planting one billion trees not a good thing?

Yes, exactly.

China is going to build 700 coal plants around the world:

http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/chinese-firms-to-...

Sure, it’s great to celebrate our wins, like planting trees, but unless we examine the big problem those little wins really aren’t going to matter.

I understand that per capita China and India emit less CO2, but China already has double the US output.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_...

The world simply can’t handle burning all of that coal. Getting China and India to use nuclear or natural gas would help a lot.

Not only China and India emit much less CO2 per capita, the US has emitted far more CO2 than any other country accumulatively. The US has been industrialized for more than one hundred years and had been the No1 emitter of CO2 for more than a century until very recently. All these CO2 accumulated in the atmosphere has not been cleaned up yet. True we should all use cleaner energy sources. Planting one billion tree is a step towards a greener environment.

It depends on the species of trees. Some are very good, other not so. In concept the idea sounds smart and positive for everybody. We need more smart people, so I hope they succeed.