Another older posting... about my beautiful trees

This posting was from about 10 months ago when I had finished reading the book Censoring Science by Mark Bowen about Jim Hansen's public outing of the Bush administration's heavy hand in controlling environmental policy. Though this infamous administration is now happily behind us, there were 8 years of damage to repair - so I feel that this blog of mine is relevant still, and is a good example of the power a rogue administration can still wield.

Trees, glorious trees
I have learned a lot this week. At a few moments, I just wanted to bury my head in the sand and to chalk the craziness up to some airborne fungus that had wafted across the globe from an exotic forest in South America, but alas, it isn't so.

So I trudge along, ankle deep in the climate crisis, the political morass/soapy drama, and the great financial spring unwinding after years of the greedy sneaking to the face of the clock in the middle of the night and adding a few more turns to the spring to keep it going, hiding the fact that the spring had nearly rusted through, duct taping it together on weekends, and all the while acting like nobody would ever know.

This week, the clock unwound and climate climbed to my forefront because I simply got so tired of hearing about the controversy - "is global warming a hoax?". I discovered that I can find all kinds of reputable science telling us that the Earth's climate is near or at a tipping point, and yet people everywhere seem to think there is some doubt as to whether the science is correct. Conversely I find three papers and three arguments that are supposed to trump the thousands of scientists, papers, articles and books confirming that global warming is here, now. From my layperson's viewpoint, I figure that if we can get ourselves into a mess, we can get ourselves out of it too. But few are truly working on the problem, and that has been frustrating.

I also found that this week had a few other surprises... the economy is quickly whittling away retirement savings. I thought and thought about this, declared a few frustrations and then realized that I had fallen into the money trap. I don't want it to bother me... I wasn't going to see that money for another 25 years anyway - what am I worried about? I have lived in a cabin in the woods cooking on a wood stove before - and I survived. I have a great life, enjoy a passionate existence on this planet, even while working 9-5, and I get to rub oil into my fellow traveler's tired shoulders every once in a while and she sighs and falls into peaceful sleep. What is better than that?

In the end, this is what life is about. It's not about what we accumulate before we die and it is not about what we pass on to our kids, it is not about our legacy - most of us aren't Nobel Laureates or George Washingtons and our legacy will be the matter we leave behind. We will fold into the soil like the remnants of a wonderful harvest and we will return to help our children and our future generations survive.

So, what we have to do is stop the madness, to slow the rush to sublime insulation through stacks of cash, and to re-engage the planet we live on. We should lean in, wrap our arms around them and listen to the trees, stop cutting them down to serve our greedy purposes and force ourselves to be a neutral presence on the Earth. We must simply stop upsetting the balance and be a part of the planet, rather than an invading parasitic army. We should engage our friends, our pursuits, our art, our lovers and families and children in this beautiful pursuit whose goal is entirely for the benefit of humanity. It can be done.