In new development the living environment is seldom given the value of historical, or social significance. A 100 year old tree is sacrificed to make space for a building designed to stand for 25 years. This is not always the case though. Through out American history we have had the foresight to realize that the trees in our communities are living monuments of the path our history has taken, and the way in which our communities and country have developed over time.
Here in Carbondale there are five, 80 year old evergreen trees that stand in the way of new development. Town trustee Frostie Merriott wrote that he had “real concerns that not much thought went
into trying to save any of the five 80-year-old spruce trees, which are
some of the most valuable trees in the Carbondale Tree Inventory.”
The fact that these trees are not considered part of our local cultural history because they are living is a misrepresentation of our connection to our living environment in Carbondale. In fact they represent our life and progress here in this climate. They are our living heritage. The attitude towards living things, even as they provide us services of rain fall, soil stability, carbon fixing, and habitat, reflects a larger and very grave disconnection between our small individual choices and their effects on larger more serious trends.
The quality of our atmosphere is deteriorating towards gas balances that are not hospitable for life. Our primary living partner in supporting an environment that can sustain our lives are our trees. The trees in our biosphere act as our externalized lungs. We rely on their photosynthesis to sustain our own lives and the lives of other species with which we have many subtle reliances. In human history we have been faced with the choice between un-apologetically destroying the natural environment in order to fit the current trend in progress or to adapt our living needs with the living needs of other species on which we depend. On this planet we know this. That if we continue to cut our trees, in particular our large trees, we are trimming the branches of our planetary oxygen tank and there will be a point the sacrifice of a few more trees, just as we have been sacrificing them for years, will be the last leverage point in tipping the balance between our environments capacity to absorb CO2 and produce oxygen.
These trees and the CO2 they hold, and the environmental services they provide are locally significant examples of the global human indifference to our dependence on other life forms. In fact we need these trees, and would be wise to plant more in order redirect the possibility of dramatic human and biological suffering that we are currently headed towards. In our time we chop an impossible 100 trees per minute as human beings. We can point a finger at deforestation, but at our first opportunity to acknowledge the significance of our connection to our trees we have failed completely. In Carbondale these trees are among the largest and oldest standing in town. They are historical, and biological land marks with in our micro society. It feels some how contrived to speak on behalf of the trees, but as Lorax understood, I must, "for the trees have no tongues."
Our history of destroying our environment beyond its carrying capacity will repeat until we evolve beyond self destructive behavior. This pattern of biological impact can be seen in developed societies through out history. What could have possessed ancient cultures to destroy the things on which they relied. The people of Easter Island decimated their environment 1 tree at a time until their soil chemistry and rain fall and biodiversity crumbled around their civilization. We have the same constraints. The same limitations apply to us weather we are aware of them or not. As we approach a tipping point with the destruction of photosynthetic life on this planet I suggest we strongly consider weather this is really an appropriate course of action. Here in this community, this course of action means preserving our limited arboreal population.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Dare to pereive
We develop conciousness or insights at the expense of other people or things. Inner light inner sight. Vision a form of reception, projection, selection. You will create something or destroy something based on the lense that you wear.
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