Yes...but!

October 20 2008

Home > Columns >Yes...But! Year 8-50

A tree is like the earth itself. Just as the earth has a miniscule layer of soil on which all life depends while underneath everything else is dead, so the tree has a thin skin of living tissue around the circumference, while the wood inside is dead as is the bark that protects its delicate innards.

Trees can live without us, but we cannot live without trees. It has been estimated that we North Americans need the oxygen of 4500 trees in order to stay alive and power our multiple combustion engines which cannot move without the breath of life trees produce. These green giants also regulate rainwater and hold fast the soil we need for our food. In short: trees are the guardians of good water, good earth, good air and good fire: trees guarantee life.

Trees also mediate – like the tree on Calvary’s hill – between heaven and earth, their heads and arms reaching for the sky and their roots deep in the ground. Every religion uses trees to link earth and spirit. The Tree of Life appears in many traditions. The first chapters of the Bible mention trees and so does its very last chapter. At the centre of history, Christ’s flesh and blood was first pounded into the tree. God gave a specific command not to destroy fruit trees, even when it is a case of survival as in war. American Indians draw their medicine wheel around a tree. In Buddhism, Gautama Buddha received enlightenment under the Bo tree.

Today trees are the last battleground in the war between Ecology and Economy. The Economy sees trees as a source of wealth- the only good tree is a dead tree- while Ecology regards them as the basis of life – the only good tree is a flourishing specimen. This is a struggle of life and death, a clash the Economy cannot win: nature always has the last Word.

Both the financial crisis and the ecological one have the same root cause: greed which has blinded us to the ultimate consequences. Although the financial crisis is currently grabbing the global headlines, the environmental ordeal – which also has been building for decades – is even more costly.

Last Friday, Pavan Sukhdev, the Deutsche Bank economist leading a European study on ecosystems, reported that we are losing natural capital worth between $2 trillion and $5 trillion every year, as a result of deforestation alone, an amount many times more than the paper money losses of some $1 trillion. Sukhdev arrived at his figure by estimating the value of the services - such as locking up carbon and providing freshwater - that forests perform, and calculating the cost of either replacing them or living without them. During the past 10,000 years the planet’s original forest cover has decreased by nearly half, accelerating ecological collapse.

Jared Diamond in his book, “Collapse” uses the tragic history of Easter Island as an example of human stupidity. There society disintegrated soon after the population reached its highest numbers, when the last trees were cut down and the construction of stone monuments peaked. As the trees and soils on which the islanders depended disappeared, the population crashed and the survivors turned to cannibalism. Diamond wonders what the Easter islander who cut down the last palm tree might have thought. “Like modern loggers, did he shout ‘Jobs, not trees!’?” Or: “Technology will solve our problems, never fear, we’ll find a substitute for wood?”

Ecological collapse, Diamond shows, is as likely to be the result of economic success as of economic failure. The Maya of Central America, for example, were among the most advanced and successful people of their time. But a combination of population growth, extravagant construction projects and poor land management wiped out between 90 and 99% of the population.

We are now at a juncture where our economic gods are abandoning us and creation’s capital is quickly disappearing. Fear has replaced greed, because too late we are realizing that we should have lived on nature’s income, rather than squandering its principal.

Economy and Ecology both have the ‘oikos’ in common. Oikos –eco- is the Greek word for ‘the place we live in,’ the planet we inhabit. That’s why Climate Change and Economic development are intimately linked together. Pumping more money in the ‘economy’, trying by all means to stimulate economic growth, without regard for long-term sustainability is self-defeating. Both monetary and environmental debt is doing us in. More debt- the Paulson-Bush way – will do us in faster.

We are in a crisis situation, a crisis much worse than the Great Depression, because we now also experience the disappearance of many species, including bees and Trees. If we lived a life that appreciated and protected trees, it would be a life that also valued and safeguarded us, and give us great joy: “we would have life and have it in abundance.” (John 10:10). A way of life that destroys trees, our present way of life, kills both body and soul.