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30 Oct, 2019 15:50

Cash-strapped ‘Treelon’ Musk vows to plant a million trees during Twitter exchange – YouTube pledges to match him

Cash-strapped ‘Treelon’ Musk vows to plant a million trees during Twitter exchange – YouTube pledges to match him

Tesla and SpaceX founder and CEO, and part-time memelord, Elon Musk, appears to have pledged to plant one million trees, on a whim and during an off-the-cuff Twitter conversation.

YouTuber Jimmy 'MrBeast' Donaldson announced the #TeamTrees initiative last week via his YouTube channel and was garnering support from his fellow content creators on the platform. 

Donaldson aims to raise $20 million by New Year’s Day to assist the Arbor Day Foundation to plant 20 million trees around the world ($1 = one tree, according to the Team Trees website). 

As of Monday, the project had already amassed a hugely impressive $6 million (six million trees). However, on Tuesday, a brief Twitter back-and-forth between YouTuber Marques ‘MKBHD’ Brownlee and Musk led ‘Treelon’ to spontaneously pledge $1 million, despite claiming that he was broke as a result of his ongoing 'pedo-guy' lawsuit.

Musk's donation has already appeared at the top of the #TeamTree leaderboard and YouTube has publicly pledged to match the entrepreneur’s donation.

Twitter chief Jack Dorsey has also reportedly pledged to plant 150,000 trees.

On his donation, Musk left a note that simply read “for Treebeard”, referring to the Lord of the Rings character, a tree-like creature called an ent who is the caretaker of a vast and ancient forest. Musk also changed his Twitter name to ‘Treelon,’ because… why not? 

As is tradition, ‘Muskovites’ across Twitter shared memes in celebration of their hero’s generosity.

At the time of writing, Team Trees had already surpassed the $8 million donation mark, though it remains to be seen whether the well-intentioned movement will fizzle out, much like the Notre Dame Cathedral restoration pledge movement did.

Also on rt.com Quick on pledges, slow on cash: France’s mega rich in no hurry with promised donations to Notre Dame

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