Saving Ourselves

IN SIBERIA  there was no spring this year. winter turned into summer almost overnight. The first few days of summer temperatures reached above eighty in the Arctic circle, setting records. The frozen tundra, frozen for thousands of years, is melting, releasing billions of tons of carbon rich methane gas into the atmosphere, accelerating climate change. The Earth is dying, and we h umans are killing it, and with it, ourselves. at the rate things are going, there will be few future generations of human civilization. The way to save ourselves and the ecosystem is still available, but time is running out. It it a multifaceted approach including population control, solar energy, and reforestation, among other endeavors. World wide, we need to plant at least one trillion trees over teh next few years. The project is already well underway. Around the world, millions are being planted everyday, and many countries have instigated mass tree planting programs. We can all help by planting carbon eating trees (all trees eat carbon) in our local communities and in our own back yards. Fifteen years ago I bought a half acre of land, barren except for crab grass, built a modest house, and planted twenty saplings, and moved in. Now I live surrounded by a lush yard with a canopy of beautiful forty foot tall deciduous trees. The summers are hot where I live, but I rarely need air conditioning. The trees keep my house cool. their branches intermingle, and in them life thrives. It was once thought and assumed that trees standing near each other compete for resources, for carbon, sunlight, and water. Is nature not competition? Do all species not compete among themselves and with other species for resources and survival? An experiment involving radioactive water, a Geiger counter, and some trees on a tree farm proved otherwise. We now know that in fact trees share, that they cooperate in assuring teh survival of all, by communicating with each through their elaborate networks of deep underground root systems. Suddenly trees somehow seem more beautiful than ever. We humans have a lot to learn from trees.