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Living within a living, loving planet
forest preservation
Hallowed Ground
Apr 28th
Hallowed Ground
by Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder
“Yews are the oldest living things in Britain, considered ancient only when they reach the age of nine hundred. Some are believed to be at least five thousand years old.”
“The roots of religious belief and the sacredness of nature were once closely entwined. Traces of this ancient relationship remain today: thousand-year-old yews grow in churchyards; the forest monks of Thailand have long followed the Buddha’s example of revering trees. In this essay, Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder profiles theologian Martin Palmer and his work to engage faith-based communities in recovering stories of love and care for local ecologies.”
“The yew, Taxus baccata of the family Taxaceae, is a conifer native to the United Kingdom. Growing up to twenty meters (sixty-six feet) tall, and sometimes taller, with peeling auburn bark and small, straight needles that grow in two dark-green rows, yews provide habitat for the goldcrest and other small birds. Every part of the yew is poisonous, with the exception of the bright-red, fleshy arils that encase the seeds, food for the blackbird and the mistle thrush. Yews are the oldest living things in Britain, considered ancient only when they reach the age of nine hundred. Some are believed to be at least five thousand years old. Yews carry an air of the secretive, and their age is notoriously difficult to determine because of their ability to withstand extraordinarily long periods of dormancy and then mysteriously decide that the time is right for new growth. Some of Britain’s oldest yews have witnessed Roman expeditions led by Julius Caesar, ancient Celtic ceremonies, Anglo-Saxon conquest, and the Black Death.”
“The National Geographic wrote that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is this high ‘for the first time in 55 years of measurement—and probably more than 3 million years of Earth history.’ The current concentration may be the highest in the last 20 million years.”
“At the beginning of each interglacial period as the ice receded from the land, vast numbers of trees spread north and performed a carbon sequestering service. They also released water vapour which stimulated cloud cover that increased the albedo effectively taking the place, as far as reflectivity is concerned, of the miles and miles of ice that had melted. With that negative feedback firmly in place and the orbital forcing factors favouring cooling, the downward cycle of Gaia’s temperature was assured and triggered the end of the interglacial period.
Unfortunately for all, these natural feedback factors been destroyed by humans. Millions of trees over thousands of years have been chopped to build armadas and commercial shipping, other war implements, and shelter for humans as if the trees’ only function to serve the greed of humans.
“Apart from the profligate burning of fossil fuels and releasing the earth’s long-term carbon and energy storage depot that has taken millions of years to lay down, deforestation has been the main contributor to the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that has resulted in global warming.” Sky McCain, Unpublished
See: http://www.earthenspirituality.com/global-warming/
https://emergencemagazine.org/story/hallowed-ground/
“You take out sacred things at your peril,” Martin says. “You’re changing the map of where you live.”
Extremely Positive News
Apr 27th
Extremely Positive News
Ecuador Amazon tribe win first victory against oil companies
AFP•April 27, 2019
https://news.yahoo.com/ecuador-amazon-tribe-win-first-victory-against-oil-023457554.html
Congress Gives Sacred Apache Land to Foreign Mining Company
Jul 30th
Congress Gives Sacred Apache Land to Foreign Mining Company
San Carlos Apache Leader Seeks Senate Defeat of Copper Mine on Sacred Land
http://www.whitewolfpack.com/2014/12/congress-gives-sacred-apache-land-to.html
“Congress is poised to give a foreign mining company 2,400 acres of national forest in Arizona that is cherished ancestral homeland to Apache natives. Controversially, the measure is attached to annual legislation that funds the US Defense Department.”
Trees are Vital to our Continued Existence
May 21st
Agony of Mother Earth (I) The Unstoppable Destruction of Forests
By Baher Kamal
http://www.ipsnews.net/2017/05/agony-of-mother-earth-i-the-unstoppable-destruction-of-forests/
“This is the first of a two-part series on how humankind has been systematically destroying world’s forests—the real lungs of Mother Earth. Part II will deal with forest depletion for wood-fuel.”
Agony of Mother Earth (II) World’s Forests Depleted for Fuel
By Baher Kamal
http://www.ipsnews.net/2017/05/agony-of-mother-earth-ii-worlds-forests-depleted-for-fuel/
“This is the second of a two-part series on how humankind has been systematically destroying world’s forests—the real lungs of Mother Earth. Part I dealt with the relentless destruction of forests.”
It is the destruction of forests and the drying up of Savannah that prevents the Earth from recovering from the exponential increase of greenhouses gasses, especially methane and carbon dioxide. Without a doubt, it is the continuing greed expressed by the corporate Gods of growth and profit that maintains the ethics and laws that reinforce the ecocide and strongly resists efforts to cooperate with the planet’s ability to self-regulate. We are faced with the enemy within that we have so far been unable to subdue. With the US containing 41% of the world’s dollar millionaires and the number of worldwide billionaires increasing by double digits yearly, who can deny that there is little hope? Money talks.
Stop killing trees!
Aug 26th
Stop killing trees!
“A new report [http://www.cgdev.org/publication/future-forests-emissions-tropical-deforestation-carbon-price] sic from the Center for Global Development [http://www.cgdev.org/] sic , released Monday, warns of what will happen if world leaders don’t take stronger steps to cut down on deforestation — that is, if we follow a “business-as-usual” trajectory. By 2050, they estimate, an area of forest equal to the size of India will be lost. The researchers came to their conclusions by using published satellite data on global forest cover from 2001 to 2012 to assess current rates of deforestation around the world.”
Destroying trees is one of the most harmful activities we humans engage in. The results fly right back in our face. Unfortunately, the financial elite think their wealth will protect them. That’s arrogance talking.
“At the beginning of each interglacial period as the ice receded from the land, vast numbers of trees spread north and performed a carbon sequestering service. They also released water vapour which stimulated cloud cover that increased the albedo effectively taking the place, as far as albedo is concerned, of the miles and miles of ice that had melted. With that negative feedback firmly in place and the orbital forcing factors favouring cooling, the downward cycle of Gaia’s temperature was assured and triggered the end of the interglacial period.
As I have pointed our already, unfortunately for all, these natural feedback factors been destroyed by humans. Millions of trees over thousands of years have been chopped to build armadas and commercial shipping, other war implements, and shelter for humans as if they were useless to anything other than to serve the greed of humans.
“Apart from he profligate burning of fossil fuels and releasing the earth’s long-term carbon and energy storage depot that has taken millions of years to lay down, deforestation has been the main contributor to the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that has resulted in global warming.1 Energy capture and storage is absolutely essential for the survival of the planet, just as energy capture and storage is necessary for the survival of individual organisms.” (Ho, M. W., 2008, pg. 81)
That’s why I emphasize that we are asking the wrong question perhaps too late. How will Gaia halt the present positive feedback loop? Could it be the halt of the Atlantic Current because of the rapid melting of northern ice? If the Atlantic Ocean cools sufficiently to absorb enough CO2 to counteract the other positive feedbacks, then possibly global cooling will be triggered.
We have James Lovelock to thank for prompting research into how the Earth self-regulates its temperature. How severely have we weakened Gaia’s ability to self-regulate effectively? When and if Gaia achieves temperature stability, what kind of environment will we have to adjust to? We simply cannot answer these two questions. We don’t know and we don’t even know if we can ever know. No sane gambler would play a game with such dismal odds. Perhaps our leaders are insane.” http://www.earthenspirituality.com/glogal-warming/
Welcome News but 10 percent is not enough
May 27th
Welcome News but 10 percent is not enough
Meg Symington is managing director for WWF’s Amazon program. She contributed this article to Live Science’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
On May 21, the Brazilian government, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and partners announced the creation of a $215 million fund to ensure long-term protection of the world’s largest network of protected areas — 150 million acres of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest.
It’s not often as conservationists that we get to celebrate such a big win.
http://www.livescience.com/45865-amazon-swath-preserved-in-huge-partnership.html
Can there be enough emphasis on how rainforest contributes to rainfall in the American Southwest and southern California?
Not so good news elsewhere
“Healthy forests can improve climate resilience by regulating watersheds and, among other things, acting as a shelter, while also mitigating climate change through capturing and containing carbon, the report continues.
But in Cambodia, where average annual temperatures have already increased by almost a full degree since 1960 and scientists have observed a two-month delay in the start of the rainy season, forest loss is the second worst in ASEAN, with nearly 92,000 hectares of forest disappearing every year.
“We all understand the consequences of deforestation and forest degradation, but individuals continue with short-term profit because there is no good preservation alternative that can compete,” Tin Ponlock, the Ministry of the Environment’s deputy climate change director, said.”
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/%E2%80%98deforestation-plagues-asean%E2%80%99