The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption by Dahr Jamail

Author:Dahr Jamail
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: The New Press
Published: 2019-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Giant sequoia, Sequoia National Park. Experts warn that drought, increasing temperatures, extreme weather, and beetle infestations could combine to kill off vast swaths of Earth’s forested areas. Photo: Dahr Jamail

6

The Fate of the Forests

I hadn’t thought much about trees until a few years ago when I moved into a small house in the Pacific Northwest in the middle of a second-growth forest of hemlock, Douglas fir, alder, madrone, and the occasional old cherry. These days, when I need a break from writing, I often step out my door and just look up at the green giants surrounding me. Watching their tops sway in the wind, especially when the late fall winds rake through them, calms me, grounds me.

Roughly a year after I bought my house, an adjacent five acres of forested land came up for sale. Knowing it was home to the deer, owls, and ravens that often keep me company, I refinanced my home and bought the land to make sure the trees stayed put. Trees remove and store carbon dioxide and release the oxygen back into the atmosphere. A single acre of mature forest absorbs 2.5 tons of CO2 and releases four tons of oxygen annually, enough oxygen to keep nineteen humans alive.1 Trees also absorb ozone, ammonia, and nitrogen oxides. Saving that five acres of trees felt like the least I could do.

Looking at these trees, I think about how their shade also keeps us cool, that they protect us from the wind, and that they are home to animals, insects, and birds. They slow evaporation by keeping water in the ground and increase moisture levels in the atmosphere, which is why you always feel better after hanging out in a grove of trees for a while. Their leaves absorb the sun’s energy, and trees lower the air temperature and absorb and store rainwater for themselves and the animals that live among them, including ourselves. They prevent erosion, especially on mountainsides and along rivers, and provide wood we use for shelter and heat, and many of them are sources of food. Most of us take trees for granted on a regular basis, but climate disruption is in the process of changing that.

January 13, 2017. Dr. Craig Allen, a USGS research ecologist at the New Mexico Landscapes Field Station at Bandelier National Monument since 1989, knows more about trees than anyone I have come across. Our first meeting is in the living room of his adobe home in Santa Fe, which is filled with pinecones, tree branches, pieces of bark, and potted plants. He has brought as much of the forest he studies into his home as he can, and his bookshelves are filled with books about trees and forests. “I care a lot about forests,” he says, stating the obvious with a smile when he sees me looking at his collection.

Allen is the quintessential scientist. He is fit from all his time in the field, his movements are efficient and precise, his speech articulate, and he wears thick glasses.

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