Today is Arbor Day! Earth Day was just a couple of weeks ago and the team at Energility was asked about the actions they take in their personal lives to Restore Our Earth™, the Earth Day theme for 2021. This article was written by one of Energility’s Co-founders Craig Foster. It is a great way end April and celebrate Arbor Day.
Trees are Meaningful!!
By Craig Foster
In July 2019, I read a paper by Thomas Crowther a professor at ETH Zurich that stated we can offset one decade of human created carbon dioxide if 1.2 trillion trees were planted around the globe.
This report excited me and took me back to my roots. I remember when my dad took an eight year old boy to an Arbor Day handout of tree twigs almost 60 years ago. We planted two maple trees in our yard and I watched them grow as I to grew and matured. And now when I return to look at these two twigs, I see huge trees gracing the lawn of my childhood home. Ever since that time I have liked trees and planted them wherever I have lived (except for our current tree covered lot). This Crowther report sent me to learn and experience more about trees. My wife and I attended a two day seminar on the relationship we humans have with forests. We learned about beneficial chemicals released by trees and how walking through the forest is calming and life-giving. We learned about how the Christian Bible starts and ends with a tree: In Genesis chapter one, Adam and Eve had a relationship with the tree of knowledge of good and evil; in the last chapter of Revelations, we read that the river of the water of life has the tree of life on its banks with different fruit for each month. Many world religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism include an image of sacred trees. Indigenous peoples respect and honor trees throughout the world. It is apparent to me, our lives as humans are intertwined with the lives of trees, as we are intertwined with all of nature. We have the chance of expanding that relationship as we look to plant and nurture more trees.
I also read two books that I found fascinating. The first, by Peter Wohlleben is The Hidden Life of Trees, What the Feel, How They Communicate. The second is The Overstory: A Novel by Richard Powers.
Wohlleben’s book enthralled me with it’s scientific explanation of how trees interact and even communicate with each other and their surrounding eco-systems. It is amazing what Wohlleben reveals about trees, their relationship with each other and with the other beauties of nature including we humans. Some say this book makes trees too much like humans. I think not, they may be superior to us.
The second book, The Overstory: A Novel by Richard Powers is a compelling story more directly about our relationship with trees, educating the reader while drawing us though a compelling, sad, and happy tale. The author traces the lives of several key characters and the impact of trees in their lives with individual biographical sketches. All of these characters come together at one spot in the Pacific Northwest to save trees from a logging company for a compelling ending. It is one of the best novels I have ever read…on any topic.
So there it is, trees inspire me. If each of the world’s 7.9 billion people planted 15 trees a year for ten years, we will have planted all 1.2 trillion proposed by Crowther’s paper. Not all can do that, so how about 150 trees each, or by contributing money for the effort, or digging the holes yourselves. One of my favorite local organizations is Friends of the Lower Olentangy.
And, it is not enough to just plant trees. We have to dig into the details to find the good. It also makes no sense to plant trees without stopping the deforestation still happening and providing viable alternatives to the economy’s dependent on this method of economic growth. We must continue to find ways to protect those at the bottom of the economic scale from the impacts of climate change.
The job is not easy, but it can be done. So why not add tree planting to your efforts to stop climate change. And then, watch them grow!