The Life Slant

SAN FRANCISCO – Professor Suzanne Simard is a remarkable woman – a passionate, courageous forest ecologist who has upended Canada’s, male dominated, planet-killing forestry sector.

Simard’s new book, Finding the Mother Tree, is an epic read loaded with curiosity, grit, discovery, grief and triumph.

Fearless, intelligent, caring women are healing our planet. Simard is indeed amongst them.

Old-growth rainforests are superlative carbon storehouses and incomparable intercontinental climate-makers, secondly only to the oceans. We cannot inhabit this planet without old-growth inhaling carbon and exhaling oxygen.

SAN FRANCISCO – This week, climate fires, climate floods, climate heatwaves and climate mega-droughts are laying waste to people and Mother Earth.

A mega-drought across America’s West is deepening. In California, a million acres are fallow. Billions of dollars forgone. No mid winter Sierra Nevada snowpack, no spring groundwater recharge, so millions of taps across the Golden State have begun to trickle.

In June amid record U.S. heat, the world’s coal producers announced 432 new coal mines, mostly in China, Australia and Russia. Avarice bankers, oligarchs and the world’s leaders are unconcerned about adding more combustion heat into the biosphere that has become a gigantic land and sea graveyard.

SAN FRANCISCO – China’s fishing armada operates more hours than the next 10 biggest nations combined. Mother Earth and all the marine creatures stand no chance whatsoever against this formidable voracious onslaught.

China has fished out the South China and East China Seas, the Sea of Japan and the Philippine Sea. So now, they’ve set sail with an expanded flotilla to conquer the oceans and all life therein.

The neocon Australian government, led by climate science-denying Prime Minister Scott Morrison, has bet the nation’s future on combusting coal, liquefied natural gas (LNG) and wood pellets. To hell with 17 Aussie ecosystems collapsing.

Has every member of Morrison’s caucus reserved a one-way seat on Space X? Do they have shares in terraforming the moon, Venus and Mars?

Keepers of rivers, waterways and
cathedrals of splendor –
O, how we of earth honor Ye and
Gitche Manitou!

Shepherd of sacred balance:
elk, beavers, trout, sturgeons,
grizzlies, wolverines, rattlesnakes,
eagles, ravens, hummingbirds,
worms, butterflies, bees.

Earthmen pay homage to thee.

Old-growth rainforests are mesmerizing. No other planet in this or any other galaxy, which we know of, supports these hallowed cathedrals of splendor.

Long-lived, self-perpetuating, unique genetics, structurally diverse with dead standing and fallen trees, gaps in the canopy and habitat for a rich array of life forms – old-growth has it all. It is the best that Mother Earth can muster at inhaling and storing carbon, exhaling oxygen, circulating freshwater, making climate and providing lodging for our brethren and sistren, the animals. Hallelujah.

Where there are rainforests it is wet: locally, regionally, continentally and intercontinentally. These stupendous biologically complex treed communities create vast atmospheric rivers of moisture, sustaining life on land. And they are giant air conditioners seeding clouds that reflect an extra five percent of incoming solar radiation into space.

From spirit bears to Tasmanian devils, rainforest life is absolutely dazzling. Predator/prey interactions are in a constant arms race. For instance, tropical rainforest fishing bats use sonar to locate fish and utilize a gaff-like toe to catch them, while plants have developed mind-boggling chemical defenses against fungi, bacteria, viruses, insects and animal grazers and browsers.

The scent within an old-growth rainforest is like walking into a heady aromatic medicine chest. Every breath is a medicinal tour de force that helps the human body ward off cancers.

About 40 million Americans, including many children, experience food insecurity. An estimated 26.5 million people in the United States live in food deserts with little fresh produce on public spaces. Urban food forests to the rescue!

These marvelous oases on community lands often have three layers of food. Fruit and nuts trees make up the overstory, shrubs like raspberries and huckleberries occupy the mid layer, and an abundance of ground food like trailing strawberries or carrots, beets, potatoes and broccoli beautify the floor.