Dear Friends: It is so important to understand that trees pull carbon dioxide, CO2, the key cause of global warming, out of the atmosphere. Tree leaves are little “solar collectors” gathering energy to build the trees’ carbon-based structure of trunks and branches.
How? Leaves use sunshine-energy to help trees ‘manufacture’ sugars at their roots. Underground fungi, attached to the roots, use sugars for survival while storing carbon in the soil. Working collaboratively — soil, fungi, help trees build trunks and branches. Stored carbon-rich soil with ground water has “tree-growing power” to get those leaves up into sunlight. Meanwhile, enriched soil collects and stores water between particles. And the atmosphere gains the extra oxygen from CO2. Isn’t that remarkable?
In short, trees breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen, which also helps replenish the oxygen that many humans and animals need to survive. We breathe out carbon, and breathe in the oxygen. Finally, trees harbor wild pollinators: moths, bees, birds, helping all the plants reproduce, including the tree saplings.
Giant, old trees build more carbon, tree ring by massive ring. Scientifically, when these ancient 100-, 200-, 300-year old trees, fall, the trunks, branches of these “mother/father” trees provide the extra carbon to the soil that is also used by emerging saplings.
But what about solar collectors? They do an ingenious job of gathering sunlight to generate electricity. They are doing something absolutely essential … slowing the rapidly increasing carbon going into the atmosphere from humans burning too much mined “fuel” — oil, natural gas, coal. Solar collectors generate quantities of electricity used to power cars, trucks, heat pumps, refrigerators, stoves, tractors, phones, etc.
However, solar collectors cannot address what is already up there. Carbon, (the greenhouse gas causing all the havoc) will be up there for hundreds of years, already, beyond repair. Solar collectors with a comparatively short life (30 years?) eventually require recycling. We need them on every building, parking lot, landfill, but even these ingeniously effective “collectors” cannot do the same thing that trees do, getting the carbon already up there, transformed into great soil, preventing flooding, offering cooling shelter. Trees cannot begin to compete with solar collectors for energy quantity, and they do not create electricity. So, we need both!
In addition to offering information on getting buildings solarized and free of greenhouse gas, perhaps your public library, school, or congregation will celebrate trees at Earth Day (April 22) or on the 150th Anniversary of Arbor Day, April 29, 2022, honoring these (potentially) giant “mother/father” trees, by starting a nursery with tree saplings for successive years? How? Identify some land that will harbor trees over hundreds of years. As they age, “parent trees” will help us all grow successive generations for transplants.
Five million Arbor Day volunteers have already transplanted 100 million trees over the last four years. The U.N. says we need five billion. Could this celebration be used to initiate an annual event in your town? (Greenfield Tree Committee has an excellent list of local trees on their website, suitable for our area, and Franklin County Tech School has a landscaping class (and local tree nursery) selling trees. Following the lead of indigenous ancestors, let’s celebrate, expressing our love of the next seven generations with these gracious, living, breathing memorials to life.
Special message to community leaders. The Franklin County Interfaith Council is sponsoring what promises to be a delightful, family celebration for Earth Day in Greenfield’s Energy Park on April 22, 2022. (Energy Park is off Main, at the end of Miles Street, just across from the Food Coop) followed by Arbor Day celebrations on April 29. For more information, contact pamelaskelly@comcast.net.
Pam Kelly lives in Greenfield.